Oh Darling Ones,

As I type I’m snotting my way through the Junior Prom episode of “Dawson’s Creek” and sending warm vibes up to my friend Christa in Duluth. She is also a member of Team Pacey whose heart is heavy with the news of James Van Der Beek’s death. He was only 48. Van Der Beek was the star of “Dawson’s Creek.”

Long time readers might remember my love for The Creek. I discovered the show round the same time I launched this website and so there are many, many, many entries about and references to “Dawson’s Creek.” I was gonna count, but got bored after hitting page 9 of the search results. Some highlights? 10 Best Episodes of Dawson’s Creek, Top 10 reasons Pacey is better than Dawson, and the one where coped with my dad’s death just like Dawson did.

This show is part of me. I’m basically Replacements’Lyrics, episodes of Dawson’s Creek, and Bob’s Burgers references in a trench coat. I remember Dawson’s Creek better than I remember my own high school years.

I’m not sure what drew me to the show. I didn’t start watching until season three. It was probably just a case of right place, right time. I was lonely in my first solo-apartment with little to no furniture and a tv that only got the WB. I didn’t get to watch the first three seasons until the DVDs came in the red Netflix envelopes.

Darling Ones, I’m lost in nostalgia and not sure I have the emotional strength to resist 2001-2003. But I couldn’t let this passing go unmentioned because James Van Der Beek’s work was important to me.

If I had it in me I’d dig a little deeper, but I need to reserve my emotional strength for tomorrow, which is wheelchair delivery day. Uffda.

Team Pacey forever,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

If you’re an avid consumer of any kind of media — books, tv, movies — you’re familiar with this trope. It’s the one where you learn of someone’s death and you do not cry.

For my entire life as a well-known and copious cryer I thought this was some writerly bullshit. Kind of like letting go of a breath you didn’t even know you were holding in or doing anything with ever fiber of your being.

Then my dad died, and I discovered this is an actual thing.

Sister #4 knocked at my door at 12:45 last Friday morning roughly an hour after we went to bed. I was still awake, though I had taken my glasses off and put my phone down in preparation for sleep.

“Jodi,” she said from the other side of my door, left ajar for Wendell. “Mom thinks dad passed.”
She started to open the door more.
“You don’t want to come in here,” I said. I sleep naked and the last thing we needed was that whole situation. “Let me get dressed.”
“Okay,” she said. “Are you coming with? Do you want me to wait?”
“Oh,” I said, sitting on the end of my bed pulling clothes out of my dresser. “No. Text me when you get there.”

I did not cry. Instead, I took a shower. I took a shower so fast I was in and out and back on the edge of the bed before my sister got to my parents’ apartment, three miles away.

I did not cry when she came home at 3 a.m. after the cremation place picked up my dad’s body.

I cried a little when Sister #2 and Ben arrived Friday morning.

I shed a few tears when Jodi Hanson came over Sunday afternoon. Mostly, though I was choking out the words to tell her how sorry I was and how much her mom’s kindness meant to me.

Now that I think about it, I cried quite a bit when the Strib published his obit online Saturday afternoon.

But it was Sunday night when Sister #4 played a voicemail from my dad wishing her a happy birthday that I lost it. It was like Dawson Leery did when he heard Mitch’s voice on the answering machine. It wasn’t exactly like that. I didn’t rip my sister’s phone from her hand and smash it or anything. I just sobbed. Hard.

When I was done, I looked at my family and said, “Boy, that hit me.”
“Well,” Sister #2 said. “Your dad did just die.”

Today I am intermittently weepy over everything and nothing. Pretty sure every fiber of my being is exhausted on a level I’ve never experienced before.

Sister #4 goes home tomorrow morning and then it’s just me, Wendell, and the grief.

I hate that the only way to deal with this is to go through it. I hate that I have to start work again on Monday like my dad didn’t just die. I hate that I’m unable to sleep my way through the mourning, which is what I usually do. I slept for like a week after my Uncle John died.

I hate everything, but you, Darling Ones.

Thanks for being here,
Jodi

The post Wherein I Turn into Dawson Leery appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

I need wrap up this whole answering the questions things because I made the header images awhile ago and tomorrow is the last entry in the COVID Diaries.*

Fun Fact: If all I ever wrote about was being a 6’5″ woman, Dawson’s Creek, and Tootsie Pop flavors I would be the most popular blogger in all the land. I’d be the Homecoming Queen of Bloggers. Seriously, a vast majority of the search terms that bring people to I Will Dare dot com relate to those three things. One that seems to be making a surge lately is about male attractiveness due to the The Official Matt Dillon Attractiveness Scale. Ellen Willis,** I love people who Google.

What is the best?

• Peanut butter spread on honeycrisp apples that have been sprinkled with a little salt\
• The way my cat jumps on the couch to get pet when I say, loudly, “What up, Wendell Gee?” whenever he comes downstairs
• Central Air (It’s been ass here in the Twin Cities for the last week)
• This gif
  
• Radishes
• Matt Dillon
• The 13 seconds from 2:00 to 2:13 in the PTMM version of “Can’t Hardly Wait.”
• Gin & Tonic & Lime
• Making your friends laugh
• French toast with peanut butter and maple syrup
• When anyone, but especially your niece, says, “I got that book you told me about and I love it.”
• Writing on a fresh sheet of paper
• A crowded dining room table
• Being seen
• Books
• The look you get right before someone you want to kiss you kisses you
• Top Chef
• The color yellow
• I saw this or heard this and thought of you

There are a floppity-jillion other things I could list, but I’ll stop there.

Am I too boring?

I doubt it. We all think we’re boring.

What is the only true currency in this bankrupt world?

What you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

what does badonkadonk mean?

Butt. Ass. Bum.

What is the definition of burgeoning?

Beginning to grow.

Why is Pacey better than Dawson?

Because he saw Joey as a full person and not as an extension of him.

How much money did Dawson get from Mr. Brooks?

It’s never explicitly stated, but it’s enough to pay for Joey’s tuition and room & board at Worthington, the imaginary ivy league university she attends.

How does Abby die in Dawson’s Creek?

She drunkenly falls off the pier, hits her head, and drowns.

What episode does Mitch Leery die? Why was Mitch killed off on Dawson’s Creek?

He actually dies at the end of the third episode of season five, but they deal with his death in the fourth episode. I read once that they killed him off because the actor was all, yeah, I’m done. There’s nothing else for Mitch to do here.

Who dies in Dawson’s Creek?

1. Jen’s Grandpa
2. Abby Morgan
3. Mr. Brooks
4. Mitch Leery
5. Jen Lindley

When do Joey and Pacey get together?

Their first kiss is season three episode seventeen when Joey goes to visit AJ and discovers he already has a Joey. Our Joey calls Pacey to come and get her, and eventually his kisses her. However, I wouldn’t consider them really together until episode twenty-three when she ditches Dawson to join Pacey and Dawson makes this face.

There were a bunch of questions about Tootsie Pops but I don’t feel like answering them, unless of course Tootsie want to ply me with a lifetime supply of Dots & Tootsie Pops. Don’t tell too many people, but I will work for candy.

See you tomorrow for the covid diary farewell,
Jodi

 
*You when the COVID Diaries are over.

 
**I don’t know about God, but I do know about Ellen Willis and she is my deity of choice.

The post The COVID Diaries: Answering Googlers’ Miscellaneous Questions appeared first on I Will Dare.

I’m about knee-deep into a rewatch of Dawson’s Creek. This is televisonary comfort food. I’m about neck-deep into the process of refinancing Supergenius HQ, and if the knots in my neck and shoulders are any kind of sign, I am not handling the anxiety very well.

So, I am enjoying this re-watch, mostly because I skipped all but about two eps of Season One. Season One sucks. I pretty much jumped right into Season Two and right now I’m into the part where Season Three gets really, really good. You know, past all the Eve crap.

What I have discovered during this 827th rewatch of this show is that Andie McPhee is literally the worst human being to ever visit Dawson’s creek or any creek or any body of water. She’s awful and she wraps all that awfulness in this perky do-gooder bullshit so you don’t realize that she’s the anti-christ.

To wit, let me list Andie’s awfulness for you.

1. She’s really shitty about her mom’s mental illness.
2. She’s really shitty about her own mental illness.
3. She breaks up with Pacey every time he doesn’t do exactly what she wants him to do.
4. She gets mad at Jack when he comes out as gay.
5. She cheats on Pacey.
6. She steals the answers to the PSATS and lies to her friends about it.
7. She cheats on the PSATS.
8. She lies about that dirtbag sexually assaulting her in an attempt to win Pacey back.
9. She pressures Jack to meet a gay kid at a coffee shop even though he’s not ready.
10. She nags Jack into moving back home even though their dad isn’t so keen on Jack’s homosexuality.
11. She tries to get Pacey to quit the play because it’s “her thing.”
12. That junior prom makeup.
13. She’s kind of a dick about Pace & Joey even though she’s dating that random kid they invited on for two episodes whose supposed to be Pacey’s lifelong friend.
14. She steals Jen’s ecstasy and then lets Jen take the fall for it.

The post The COVID Diaries: Thoughts on an Anxiety-Fueled Rewatch of Dawson’s Creek appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hello Darling Ones,

How are you? I am bored and cranky, the monotony of the pandemic is getting to me and the mind-numbing routine of my daily life is bringing me down.

Sister #2 and my brother-in-law were in from Portland for about 36 hours last week. It was good and awful. We ate Wendy’s and pizza! It seems so luxurious to eat food not made by me, but we were anxious about if we were exposing each other. I kept calling my sister Typhoid Ericka. It wasn’t funny, but it kind of was. They took Charles with them and I miss him terribly, but he seems to love being in Portland and eating all of Walter’s food.

On Mother’s Day I got to see my mom for a hot second at a mostly socially safe distance. She stopped by to pick up her Mother’s Day gift, which was a batch of tuna salad and some potato chips. Only she left the potato chips here because she’s a brand traitor who prefers Ruffles to Old Dutch like some kind of Wisconsinite or something. Did I ever tell you about the Great Potato Chip Taste Test of 2018? Probably. I’ve told all my good to mediocre stories about 892 times. It’s the problem with having a small life and a very, big* blog.

What else is new? I bought a bunch more garbage to fill up the hole in my soul where, I dunno, soul good stuff should be? Mostly I keep pre-ordering records from random record stores around town. And I also bought a Dawson Leery Funko Pop because I had the other three Capesiders and Dawson really ties the group together. In fact, without him to provide context the other three look like random plastic people. My Funko Pop collection has gone from cute to embarrassing to problematic. I basically feel like my cousin Christine who used to keep her Precious Moments figurines in a custom-lit China hutch in her living room. She used to tell us all about the figures and pointed out the ones that were extra special or unique or rare. I can’t really remember.

The only difference between is that I call my China hutch the China cabinet, because that’s what we always called it growing up, and it’s in the dining room and it’s filled with yarn and signed books and, well, all the stupid records I keep ordering.

In other news, I downloaded a dating app about an hour ago and I’m already annoyed. The first message I got was from a man who said, and I quote, “you must be a dude because the tallest girl I ever met was 6’1″” The second was from man who got all salty when I responded to his “do you want to meet in person?” with “Maybe.”

My guess is I’ll delete the fucking thing before the night is through. I have zero patience for tomfoolery that doesn’t amuse me from the get go.

In actual important news, I tried a lemon-flavored Tootsie Pop. It was a surprising delight. So delightful that I’m considering updating the Definitive Tootsie Pop Flavor Ranking.

That’s all I got for now Darling Ones. I’m gonna go watch Tim Walz address the state. I’m really afraid he’s gonna open shit up and then my nephew will go out and about living life and bringing the dirty virus into my home and I will die.

The good times are killing me,
Jodi

*big as in long time and not big as in lots of readers. Six people read this blog. They are six of the smartest and kindest and best looking people on earth, so I’ve got that going for me.

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