Tonight I’ll probably finish reading Sally Field’s memoir In Pieces. It’s been way more interesting thing I expected. I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but I wasn’t prepared for so much gut-wrecnching honesty about her childhood and early career.

Because Field is a woman in America she was, of course, abused by men in power be it her step-father or shitty directors or shitty movie stars she dated. It makes my stomach hurt that none of this surprises me. In fact, I’ve come to the point of living in this rape culture of ours where I approach all men, and especially men in the arts squinting through one eye, wholly prepared to learn that he’s raped/molested/harassed someone, usually a woman.

So I kind of held my breath and squinted as Field approached her time on the TV show “Gidget.” I love Gidget, and I was super afraid of losing her or having the show tainted by some man’s shitty behaviors.

She doesn’t spend much time on Gidget, really, which makes sense because it was only on for one season. However, she did say that the man who played her father was super kind and dad-like to her. Thank god.

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I’m the kind of hermit who gets increasingly anxious and angry when forced to be social too many days in a row. And my definition of social is: speaking to humans with my mouth. By my count I have had to talk to humans every single day since the last episode of It’s Sunday & I’m Boring. Summer is exhausting.

Today, however, was my day to rest, re-set, and re-charge, and I started to the day out right at the crack of 8:30 a.m. and the only reason I roused by crusty bones from bed was to take Walter for a walk lest he burst. The dog of my heart is visiting for the week while Sister #2 and fam are visiting friends in Florida.

Because I finished the draft last week, I started the morning with some rage-inducing “Meet the Press.” It was the episode where they decided to cut short an interview with Texas State Senator & Fillibustering Badass Wendy Davis so they had to time to get the opinions from the 5-men, 1-woman round table. Apparently NBC News doesn’t think there’s enough venues for rich, white men to spout their opinions on what women should do with their bodies. I guess the entire Hollywood-Advertising complex isn’t enough.

After I cooled down, I watched an episode of “The Brady Bunch” (the one where Jan is allergic to Tiger’s flea powder) while farting around on the Internet. Long about 10:30ish I decided it was totally time for a nap, and curled up on the couch with Paco, Walter, and Carrie Mesrobian’s Sex & Violence. Sadly, I only got a few pages into it before my lids drooped. I blame this more on eBooks being the cure for insomnia and not at all on her writing (which I am loving, and maybe will just have to wait to get a paper book to read it). My iPad is filled with electronic books that are about 39% read. I don’t think I’ve ever read more than four pages of any eBook without wanting to sleep. I don’t know what it is. Science should figure that out.

Freshly napped, I took Walter out for his afternoon constitutional and then settled into a delicious bowl of potato salad for lunch. It was leftover from my brother-in-law Ben’s masters degree celebration party. Sadly, there was none of the delicious popcorn salad left for me to have for lunch. That shit disappears quick.

After two episodes of “Gidget” (two of my least-favorite the one where she goes car shopping in her pajamas with the dad from “Bye Bye Birdie” and the one where the Blitz & Jeff pay the dude to babysit her at the big overnight surfing competition), I decided that maybe I should do something besides watch TV. So I did the dishes. I pondered cleaning the entire kitchen but decided that was madness and opted instead to read the beast.

The beast is beastly and I scribbled all over the first thirty or so pages before it became too depressing/overwhelming.

Then there was some dinner making, dinner eating, and more TV watching. A Sunday so boring you are probably dead right now. Myself, I’m going to go take Walter out again and then hit the sheets with Norah Labiner’s Let the Dark Flower Blossom.

The “It’s (Insert Day of Week) and I’m Boring” is a series that Christa and I do to pay homage to the beauty of old-school blogging. (I totally copied this nice explanation from Christa).

The post It’s Sunday & I’m Boring: The Veggie Veg Veg Edition appeared first on I Will Dare.

Ha! I’ve been boring all week. I was laid low by a sinus headache for most of the week which just spiralled into a bout of sloth and self-loathing fed by cold and snow. I’ve decided sinus headaches are like migraines without the light sensitivity and vomiting but with the added benefit of not being able to move your head and/or eyes without wanting to die. Good times.

Man, May has been a total bitch so far. However, the sun is shining as I type and two of the three Tibbles are Minecrafting while the third one, wisely, sleeps. It’s 8:18 a.m. and we’ve been up for 45 minutes. In a moment I will make some monkeybread since I’m pretty sure feeding children nothing but a banana for breakfast is not such a good idea.

But I wanted to tell you before the monkeybread & Meet the Press how I fell into a LinkedIn hole. Of all the social networks, LinkedIn is the one I ignore the most. The only time I even think about it is when I get an invitation to connect & I click accept. I always click accept. So LinkedIn must have redesigned or I’m kind of slow this morning because I haven’t had coffee, but I started scrolling through the people I might know or whatever they call that page that comes up after you click accept. Wow. I don’t know what kind of sharing/email scraping/Internet Voodoo they use to make that page, but damn. The page started out with about seventy-kajillion Nerds from The Nerdery, which isn’t surprising, and slowly morphed into a mixture of all the Canucks I worked with at Hell, Inc. and a variety of publicity people in publishing, which is all logical. But then it started to get a little, um, uncomfortable. I counted at least five dudes whose lips I had been closely acquainted with. What the fuck, LinkedIn? Like I needed that reminder first thing on a Sunday morning from a career website.

Also, this is just a reminder that nothing ever is private. The computers know all the things.
Also, two of the stupidest, most annoying women I have ever worked with have VP titles. Apparently they give those to anyone these days.

Nolan and I had this discussion over monkeybread & “The Brady Brunch:”
“It looks stupid,” he said.
“It’s awesome,” I said. “Look at their house & the stereotypical gender roles!”
“That’s what scares me,” he said.
“What?”
“The traditional gender roles. . . and their clothes.”

The Tibbles & I spent some time playing with LEGOs until our patience was spent. At that point Nolan & Liam did some minecrafting, Cade did some straight up crafting, and I settled in to catch up on some work I skipped during last week’s bout of asshole sinuses.

Things were going smoothly until Cade sliced his thumb open with a pair of scissors. Surprisingly, everyone remained calm during the medical emergency. After the photographing (his idea, not mine), cleaning, and the bandaging, Sister #3 & Mamala returned from the wilds of South Dakota where they had been watching Sister #4’s commencement. She’s now a master of communications.

Now it’s time for some bathing, napping, and other stuff that doesn’t involve speaking to anyone until Family Dinner.

That nap never happened. I spent more time than intended watching “Gidget,” which included these gems:
“Oh, Men! If I could only figure out what to do without them, I’d do it!” The female editor of Gidget’s high school newspaper.
“If your best friend isn’t William Shakespeare & he asks you to read something he’s written, go hide in the closet,” Gidget.

Eventually I roused myself from the couch and spent some quality time in lilac-scented heaven while listening to Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). There was an attempt at napping but I decided to blow dry my hair instead. Good thing too, because I was late for Family Dinner. The pizza arrived before I did, and there was a little concern from the Liam, the littlest Tibble that I’d forget the ridiculous chocolate cake. As if.

Family Dinner was spent with a debrief about the South Dakota escapades. Maxwell told me how he’s a junior high radical and Jaycie said that people often stop her in the hall to talk about her Communist brother. He makes me laugh. I will have to remember to start calling him Comrade. He’ll get a kick out of that. He’s very into the whole Soviet thing, especially the propaganda. It’s adorable.

Then I showed Jaycie, my niece, the best way to make a fake-flower head garland thing. She was only semi-impressed with my ingenuity. Also, she said she was going to make me one so we could be matchers when we go to Rock the Garden next month. Then I made fun of her for wanting to see Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes.

We yapped about all kinds of other stuff and I made fun of Sister #2 for trying to make fun of my herb garden (or impending herb garden as I haven’t actually planted it yet).

“You’re just jealous of my passion for herbs,” I shouted.
“No.” She laughed. “I just can’t wait to her about the fungus gnats.”

Then I came home to tell you about all my boringness. Orange you glad you didn’t ask?

The “It’s (Insert Day of Week) and I’m Boring” is a series that Christa and I do to pay homage to the beauty of old-school blogging. (I totally copied this nice explanation from Christa).

The post It’s Sunday & I’m Boring: The Disturbing LinkedIn Discoveries Edition appeared first on I Will Dare.

I got home late last night, nearly midnight, which is really super late for angry hermits who never leave the house. And because I’m one of those people who can’t go right to bed upon arriving home I sat on the couch to unwind which involved drinking water and kind of watching “Joe Dir”t because when I turned on the TV that’s what was on. Eventually, I made my way to bed before figuring out what the fuck Joe Dirt was about.

This is to explain why the only reason I got out of bed at 8:30 is because the coffee was done and I wanted coffee and to watch “Meet the Press” only instead of really watching MTP I finished my taxes and then spent the rest of the time in a stew of anxiety about my sudden pauperdom. And this all just means that I need to finish this coffee and take a nap.

My nap was thwarted by caffeine and Ann Wilson talking about feminism and weight. So I made brunch and watched The Brady Brunch where I discovered Greg Brady is my spirit animal. “Groovy red hair and mysterious green eyes really turn me on,” he said on the phone to someone he was trying to con into going to the Hoe Down with him. It’s the episode where Jan wants to be an only child and is a total bitch to everyone.

About this time I decided to make some brunch (scrambled eggs with sausage and peppers) and after that I was all “mmm, nap time.” But then I discovered “Gidget” on one of those new channels I get because I have a magic TV. I love Gidget. If I were to make a Rob Gordon (“High Fidelity”) Top Five dream jobs list if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object: #3 on the list would be Screenwriter for Early-60s Sitcoms, specifically Batman or Gidget.

The dialog on these shows is simply delicious. Apparently, I have talked about this before. Sometimes things like this disturb me and make me feel extra-super boring. Other times I’m all “Right on, Jodi, way to be consistent!”

Today’s selections from “Gidget”

“She cursed me and whammied my surf board!”
“When a girl is as cute as you you don’t have to do anything.”
“The sounds is so out of sight you can’t tell us from The Rolling Stones.”
“Dad, let’s face it, conformity is in.”
“The only thing you get today are the moaners and wailers and funny jumpers.”

Anticipate much more “Gidget” quotes in upcoming episodes of It’s Sunday & I’m Boring

After “Gidget” I was really, truly cranky and on the edge of falling into that Sunday Blahsuck abyss that is often so awful it spills all over Monday. Because I am a responsible adult, I decided it was time to take a bed nap. I don’t often nap, much less full-on bed nap.

See, my bookclub has decided there are different kinds of naps. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my bookclub lately? They’re the awesome. Last night half of the people were watching cat videos on sister #2’s TV while Wolfdogg & Sister #2 looked up ingredients for classic cocktails, which will be a feature of the next two meetings, and I was looking for books set in the 50s.

So we’ve discussed the various kinds of naps and napping. I’m a fan of the 20-minute on the couch, in and out of consciousness powernap. Others are the strip-down and jump in bed hour-long nappers. Some are just clothes their eyes in the chair nappers. It takes all kinds. Today, I did the strip down, curl up into bed nap.

It was glorious and the best thing I did today. Ninety minutes of sleep on a rainy Sunday is just about the best thing ever.

(Aside: the word count for this post was at 666 before I started typing this aside).

Since stupid Sister #2 is in stupid Canada interviewing for a stupid professor job at some stupid university up there and since my brother-in-law Ben makes 98% of all Family Dinners, we let him choose anything he wanted that Ericka hated and that’s why I had to make Tator-Tot Hotdish after my nap. Then there was Family Dinner where we Skyped with Sister #2, Jaycie talked about how excited she was to go to Coachella next week, I told her she had to use part of the hondo Grandpa slipped her to buy me a tacky souvenir, and I pet Walter, who is coming to stay with me on Thursday.

Now I am home telling you about how fucking boring I am. Are you impressed yet by my boringness? I am impressed by your willingness to read my boringness.

The “It’s (Insert Day of Week) and I’m Boring” is a series that Christa and I do to pay homage to the beauty of old-school blogging. (I totally copied this nice explanation from Christa).

The post It’s Sunday & I’m Boring: The Various Kinds of Naps Edition appeared first on I Will Dare.

Being Minnesota teens of the 80s I can only surmise that our adoration of the show was all due to the perky charm of Sally Field. We really loved the show and when my sister got Gidget – The Complete Series on DVD for Christmas, we dove in with gusto. It’s still as charming and entertaining as it was in the 80s (yes, I realize the show originally aired in the 60s).

It was during some rampant googling to find every bit of Gidget trivia we could find that I discovered the tv series (and movies) were inspired by a novel. It took me roughly 18 seconds to order up a used copy of Gidget by Frederick Kohner, who was a screenwriter and father to the actual Gidget.

The novel is a fictional account of Gidge’s summer the year she was fifteen and discovered the surfer dudes down at Malibu. If you’re familiar with the Sandra Dee movie from 1959, you’d be familiar with the story in the book. Young Francie happens upon some surfers and immediately falls in love with the sport. She attaches herself barnacle-like to this band of wayward surf bums with names like Moondoggie, Lord Gallo, Don Pepe, and Kahoona.

Gidget spends the summer lying to her parents, learning to surf, and endearing herself to the boys on the beach, especially Moondoggie a nineteen-year-old college man. There’s a lot of teenage dramatics and game-playing when it comes to the romance between Gidget and Moondoggie. Reading it is a bit tiresome, only because it’s become so cliche.

But it’s the language here that saves the day. It’s reminiscent of Holden Caulfield with a lot of surf jargon thrown in. The dialog throughout is a lot of fun, if not wholly believable. At times it really did read like a sitcom and I wonder if that’s because it was written by a much older, widely-read screenwriter. Throughout the course of the book Gidget draws some pretty sophisticated literary allusions to her life. They don’t feel right coming from a lovestruck fifteen year old — no matter the era. Plus, I really couldn’t get it out of my head, especially during some of the more sexually frank passages, that this story was being written by Gidget’s dad. It felt kind of creepy.

While I enjoyed reading the book, mostly because of the cloud of nostalgia around it, I can’t help but think it would have been more interesting had it been written by Kathy Kohner, the real-life Gidget, like she wanted.

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