How do you say “Hey HEY hey!” in latin?

Hi puppies! Bloggin’ Colleen is back! Not that anyone ever called me Bloggin’ Colleen. Hell, only half the people I know even call me “Colleen”. Ok, well that’s not true. I guess it’s just my family and all those long-lost elementary and high school friends that have found me on facebook (yay facebook!) that still want to call me “Shannon”.

<—-Shannon

<—–Colleen

Any questions?

My best girly girlfriend up northwestern way is upstartin’ her bloggin’ again (ain’t no endin’ ‘g’s in this blog, er blo!) to explore and share her experience in international adoption. Ya’ll remember Sandykins! http://skaduce.wordpress.com

So anyhoot, I said I would start blogging again if she was blogging, well, because that’s how this whole thing got started in the first place. Elaborate Hour (the original and still greatest Blog de Colleen) was started on her inspiration/suggestion. (2004, yo)

I just realized that the Elaborate Hour is like a demolished historic amusement park – a lost treasure of the bygone days of leisure and fun for fun’s sake. Only memories remain. Where’s the fun?

I think I need a new latin category for “where’s the fun?”.

I never remember what these damn latin categories mean.

 

 

The Pigeoneers – Trailer

The Pigeoneers

a feature documentary film written, directed and produced by al croseri

“The Pigeoneers” is an homage to the bravery of homing pigeons who saved thousands of lives in combat in the Great World Wars. Their achievements embodied the attributes of service, endurance, loyalty and supreme courage. Here, their memory is evoked by Colonel Clifford A. Poutre, Chief Pigeoneer, U. S. Army Signal Corps Pigeon Service, 1936-1943.

Pigeons in Combat

 

Shrimps I Can’t Date

 

Special MICD Post

Men I Can’t Date:

Jerry Lewis (swoon!)

Men I Won’t Date:

Jerry Lewis

 

Hamburgers, Chimps and Seagulls

Now, based on that post title, you might be thinking, WOW, Colleen is having one groovy Wednesday night!! But the truth of the matter is: Colleen is having one groovy existence! Thanks in large part to, well, Life. Life takes you here, it takes you there, and it presents to you any number of people, places and things (The Beatles or The Monkees, Chubby Checker!), and with alarming frequency (and painfully glaring exceptions), they’re TOTALLY AWESOME.

Things I’m appreciating in my groovy existence tonight:

• The Comcast Cable Guide’s description of the Travel Network’s show Hamburger Paradise: “Hamburgers.”
• Animal Planet’s Escape to Chimp Eden – because that name makes it sound like late-night monkey porn!
• The tenacity and all around undeniable cuteness of a flock of seagulls descending upon an unguarded picnic at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Granted, I would be more excited if it had been pigeons, but I think the seagulls add a level of sophistication that the pigeons might have lacked given the same circumstances. Besides, everyone knows Pigeons Prefer Cheetos. (Video features the voice talents of myself and my darling dearest, Vincent Gargiulo of The Animal Forestry Commission, who warrants a bullet point all his own under Things I’m Appreciating.)

 

Afmelding

In case you ever wondered what it looked like to unsubscribe from a Danish newsletter! Ja!

 

It’s Not Hate, It’s Creative Writing!

Don’t worry. I didn’t send those breakup letters (see earlier posts: The Breakup Letters). I just published them on the world wide web! As my mom observed, I’m in the ‘anger’ stage of the grieving process.

Grrrrrrr.

Ultimately, they’re just little creative writing pieces (mini missives!) that are channeling my wrath. I’m a creative writer! See? Hooray for me (and my awesomeness).

I believe the Breakup Letters were also inspired in part by Geoff Herbach’s new book, The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, which is a collection of suicide letters written with a bit of a sardonic wit. My Breakup Letters are the lovechild of that novel concept and the miniStories competition (image above)! (Geoff Herbach is the creator of the miniStories competition.)

I just realized that I could personally thank the man who selected my story for the miniStories competition  – a Mr. David Oppegaard.  So I did (via myspace)!  And I’ll do it again! Thanks, David!

The Barnard mini series needs updating, I know. I did write more of Barnard’s story during NaNoWriMo this past year. Some new facts that were revealed about Barnard: He’s got a sister named Leida who drinks, a mother who drinks, and neither of them know quite what to think about Barnard (who doesn’t drink). Barnard has a love interest named Mirabelle about whom he’s very anxious (as you might guess). Barnard dreams about toast.

Fascinating!

Well, I believe this post has served its purpose, which was to let everyone know (especially strangers and prospective employers) that I’m not being nasty and sending hate mail to my ex-boyfriend (it’s just creative expression! Er. Right?), and to promote my miniStories win.

Thank you, good night!

 

The Breakup Letters, 2008, Entry 03

Hey Crapface,

I was going to apologize for that first letter, but forget it. I had a dream last night that you missed a performance of mine, then turned off your phone so I couldn’t get a hold of you. When we finally did talk, you asked if I could bring you home a Reuben, selfish pr!ck.

So, by the way, “stay out of my f$&#ing life” covers the dreamworld, too, pissant.

Cram it.

~C

 

The Breakup Letters, 2008; Entry 02

Jerkwad,

This morning isn’t so bad, no thanks to you. I spilled some coffee on the sink, then grabbed one of the kitchen towels, the green one, probably the one that wasn’t absorbent enough for you, creep, and then I just suddenly felt such a fondness for my kitchen towel, for kitchen towels in general, really. I said to myself, “I love kitchen towels.”

And it was a good feeling to love something again.

Loser.

~Colleen

 

The Breakup Letters, 2008; Entry 01

Dear Jackass,

Are you staying the f*@# out of my life? Because I distinctly remember telling you to “get” the f$#@ out of my life and “stay” the f#@( out of my life.

Wherever you are in relation to my f*$#ing life right now, take a huge f&@#ing step backward, assh@le.

Sincerely,

Colleen

 

If I only do one thing in life…

Dear Colleen Marlow,

This email message is sent to you from PetitionOnline.com to confirm your signature as “Colleen Marlow” on the online petition:

“The Monkees Entry into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame”

hosted on the web by our free online petition service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Kretch07/

Your signature on the petition is already complete, and there is no need
to reply to this message.

Your signature number for this petition is 12619.

 

Queen of May

It’s the May Day Parade today! I’m not sure exactly what we’re celebrating as a community here, perhaps pageantry and puppetry! Spring, summer, May, sun…I hope there are Maypoles.

In any event, I lingered in bed this morning, in the streaming sunlight from my window, thinking about what I could celebrate today.

• My awesomeness
• My friends’ awesomeness
• California, The Promised Land
• The resiliency of the human heart
• The buoyancy of giant puppets
• My best buddy Andy’s film debut
• The color green
• Susan Bunnykins, Queen of May
• Men who want to be better men for the woman they love
• Women who want to be better women for the man they love
• Anyone who holds out for a love greater than they dreamed possible

Awww, May Day is a LOVE festival!

It is only with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre’s annual May Day Parade that we can shed our fears of winter and join in a communal celebration of rebirth that is as joyous, giddy, and oversized as our emotions.

When those two-story-tall puppets begin their haunting, wordless journey to Powderhorn Park, whatever remains of our seasonal depression slips away.

The relief of it is enough to send spectators into tears when, along with the tens of thousands of other attendees, they begin to sing a song that finally banishes winter for another six months: Gene Autry’s “You Are My Sunshine.”

Crap. I am going to cry if they sing that damn song.

Oh well. I’ll make a float out of my oversized emotions and ride it all the way home to California.

Susan Bunnykins, Queen of MAY!!!!!

 

New Tag: Men I Can’t Date

I like that new tag. “Men I Can’t Date”, meaning of course, “Men I Should Like to Date, or Could Imagine Dating, Were They Not Married or Otherwise Unavailable, and Were My Heart Not Still in Tatters from My Recent Breakup”.

So in honor of all that, ahem, I post a rather gratuitous post on Robert Downey, Jr., inspired in no small way by the following excerpt from the New Yorker’s review of Iron Man:

Downey, beefed up, his torso drenched in sweat, looks like a nineteenth-century blacksmith.

 

Rough Days and Old Milwaukee

I rambled only slightly drunkenly last night to a sound guy from Milwaukee, up for the Bent Festival, about how I couldn’t help feeling like I was in a sitcom as I was driving through and around Milwaukee. It had a gritty yet domestic feel, an accessible urban landscape. Things were solid and a little depressing. Time felt suspended and the people seemed rooted to the place, past and future. The sound guy nodded enthusiastically throughout my rambling, as if I was making a lot of sense. I’m fairly certain I wasn’t. And I don’t know what any of that has to do with sitcoms. Maybe I’ve just watched too much Laverne & Shirley.

It rained on the way down to Milwaukee. It rained while I was in Milwaukee. It rained, and I had had a really rough couple of weeks. A life and a love that I had given everything for had just crumbled, finally, entirely, heartbreakingly. It was something that I couldn’t (and still can’t) bear fully, the pain being way too much to ever take in one sitting. (Every day I let a little more pain pass through me. I’ll cry for maybe two minutes and then get on with things. Or I’ll let the emotion totally overwhelm me for only 10 seconds, gasp, sob, then continue walking out the door to a distraction.) The trip to Milwaukee was an opportunity of coincidence, a plan put into spontaneous action, a way to go, a place to be, the past and future rolled up tightly together in an overnight bag and thrown in the back of an economy rental car.

That thing had shitty wiper blades, let me tell you.

This love I lost, the love of my life, I reordered my entire life around it. Everything that had come before it fell away, grew faint and insignificant. When it ended, it was as if a love of thirty years, not nine months, had been destroyed.

And it is all the more devastating to me, because I laid myself bare in this relationship. Never before had I exposed my faults, my mistakes, my pain. I rolled them all out in a series of painful confessions, late-night phone calls that lasted hours, anxious emails with paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation and analysis – emotional, taxing, and scary as hell. I made myself more vulnerable than I have ever made myself to another human being, because that is what you do for love; for real, true, fucking love, that is what you do.

I had never loved someone like that before.

But of course you can’t control what other people do with your truth. Their truth might beat the crap out of your truth and leave it bloody and penniless on the side of the road. That’s kinda what I feel like happened to my poor little truth. I had to pick it back up, dust it off, and say, “It’s okay, little buddy. That didn’t have anything to do with you. It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

And we took a road trip to Milwaukee together, my battered truth and I. And we were a little too numb to do much besides drink in the downstairs lounge of the Best Western, but we learned some more things together, because truth just keeps taking life in, you know? She grows and learns, makes mistakes and sometimes repeats them, makes new mistakes and feels really bad about them – but I’m there for her now, in a way I haven’t been before, to make sure she doesn’t beat herself up too much over it.

 

Writes Books About Pigeons, Cute, Married. Damn.

Mo Willems is on the road promoting The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, and I was able to go see him this afternoon at Wild Rumpus bookstore in Minneapolis (thank you freelancing!). My favorite book of all time is his Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. (It combines two of my favorite things: pigeons and public transportation!)

Mo had the air of someone who’s had to tolerate too many children, too many times in the last few weeks.

There were a LOT of children there.

He managed to put a good deal of gravitas into this scene where the pigeon actually encounters a real puppy face-to-face.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Then it was time to learn how to draw the pigeon!!

Beat that, kids.

Lots of aspiring pigeon artists!!

They probably won’t grow up to hate pigeons, like so many of my generation.

YAY MO!!!!

And finally, the autograph! He knew I rocked! Just by looking at me!

I was going to ask him if he knew about National Pigeon Day, June 13th, but I forgot. Because he said, “I’m just going to write ‘Colleen Rocks’. Is that okay?”

I said, “That’s awesome.”

Heh.

 

Ok, I’m off to Mall of America!

from youtube.com posted with vodpod

 

It helps that there’s this…

 

Morning Cope of Coffee

So the trick is, you don’t lay in bed for too long upon awakening. No, no, no! I mean yes, it’s gray, and snow or rain or other such depressing precipitation can be observed outside your window, and your heart is heavy with loneliness and crushed by betrayal, but do not be overwhelmed! It’s one minute at a time, and four cups of coffee, then a mouth sucked of moisture, and heart palpitations, and an inability to focus…

And you think, what else?

Write, read, talk, work, turn on all electronic devices and watch them flicker, hear them hummmm.

Consider a psychic healer, look for a local carousel, go to the Mall of America and ride the roller coaster, sign up for free information on how to start your own mini-donut business! YES!

I’m not kidding. http://www.lilorbits.com/

Imagine the possibilities, for the possibilities are endless. And all the stars in your possibilities constellation are simply pointing to a different spot in the sky. Go there, see! Go there.

Good morning!

 

Today’s Quotes

As found printed and illustrated on exquisite letterpress postcards by Lunalux Art & Design Workshop:

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
-Helen Keller

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.
-R.W. Emerson

Begin with loss and see
how the world contradicts you,
how the horizon implies that beyond it
the water is not empty but full of ships
all docking at another island.
-Lynn Emanuel

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand – a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
-Henry Miller

Another perfect day, all jade and sapphire. No place can have more beautiful days than Minnesota when it behaves.
-Sinclair Lewis