A few days ago, I fell into a crush to rival a crush any 13 (or 16, or 18)-year-old girl ever had on Adam Ant. (Which, I hear, can be quite pitter-pattery, and should not be confused with, say, artistic crushes on Lindsey Buckingham. Or whatever kinds of crushes seven-year-old girls get on Barry Manilow that cause them to write fan mail saying how much they enjoyed him in the Willy Wonka movie. I hear.)
My crush? Its name is Tylenol P.M.
I came to work rested today (now yesterday), and you need to know we kicked the shit out of the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet. Even Shakespeare would've put it just like that. (Here it is in basic iambic pentameter: "You need to know we kick'd the shit, oh YEAH.")
Seriously, in two classes? In two classes, the kids asked if we could present what we were doing to the whole school. Seriously. Even my jaded junior who is repeating the class said, "Miss? We should get the theatre and have everyone in the school come watch." Seriously.
And it's not like we did anything special. I explained the prologue line by line, we discussed as necessary, and then we practiced memorizing it and reciting it as a group, while doing accompanying body movements thought up by the kids.
I almost had to lie down when someone said, "I didn't know language could be like music." Lassie, run to the school nurse! I need a compress!
Any further crowing would be too identifying, but it was on this happy wave I drove home, gassed up the car, grabbed Mike, got venti double-chocolaties from the Starbucks drive-thru, and drove the 99 miles to Laughlin.
After making a sharp left just a mile from the California border, Laughlin is within stone-skipping distance of Arizona.
Here Mike will stand on the "Laughlin Strip" and point to Arizona for you:
Is the uphill water flow not impressive?
Also in Laughlin (pop. 8,629) were about 70,000+ bikers. I'm not exaggerating.
These are things you find out after you buy your Blue Oyster Cult tickets, see? When you're trying to get a hotel room and everything is booked or $300. We couldn't even get a room at this neato hotel in Kingman, thirty miles away.
My sleep was so exponentially bad at the start of the week that I was sure we'd have to cancel. Even if I could make it there, from where would come the energy to get home?
(Here I pause to put my arm around the Tylenol P.M. box and give it a sickeningly lovey squeeze.)
Mike, being Australian, instinctively thinks of bikers as "known criminal figures." Luckily Hollywood makes movies like Wild Hogs to better his cultural understanding of our motorcyclin' "Altamont was a statistical aberration" friends.
The bikers were all cool. Plus, they made me, in my dark jeans and brushed clogs, feel like if Martha Stewart wandered in to the BOC show, she'd gratefully grab the seat next to me. Can't you just see me there with Martha, pumping our fists to "Godzilla"?
Wait, let me help:
The video quality is awful, I know, because 1) hey, pocket camera, and 2) the Riverside casino is surprisingly strict about any recording. (Even the low-quality stuff.) I had to be super-sneaky. So, yes, I am admitting to breaking the rules. But, ahem, maybe I should mention the part where Mike bought front row seats (tables) over the phone but when our tickets were arrived they were second row seats, which, when surrounding perpendicular tables, is like (gasp) seventh row? And then the tickets say that "changes may occur" and it's not like we have more than a phone conversation in the ether to prove it.
So, never minding that they were still great seats, I think I'll flaunt my little "Oops, I didn't realize the camera was on! I was just checking the time!" incident without apologies, mm hmm.
Oops, there it goes again:
Sometimes when I check the time, I like to lean into Mike's shoulder and hide the LCD screen with one hand while nodding to the beat. Then I like to move the camera around to peek at the LCD screen to make sure the, um, time is still in frame. This causes any accidental video recording to require seasickness bands. Again, oops!
Also, sometimes my crush (artistic variety) on Buck Dharma makes my hands wobble. I can almost forgive that they didn't play "Harvest Moon." (Almost.)
The whole evening was great fun. We had a delicious cafe meal at the Aquarius resort next door (Spanish omelet for me, salad and chicken wings for Mike), plus we joined the Aquarius slot club and got "windicators." These are key chains that will start twinkling if you are the person randomly chosen to win $25 in free slot play.
Guess whose key chain went winky-winky?
After the show, we used their $25 to cash out with $15 - yikes. Good thing we weren't playing with our money.
Outside the Aquarius (apparently I'm not going to mention the other casinos), imagine our surprise to look into the shrubbery and see a... a... a... skunk?
Who knew they were so playful? And such a plush skunk he/she was. Looks like it's time for another suggestion email to Squishable.com.
I was getting all kinds of ideas, ideas that must call back to my Ozark-abiding ancestors, but pet skunks are illegal in Nevada. (Also, they eat small rodents.)
The drive home was easy-peasy. I wasn't overly tired, although at this point that probably had more to do with the two Mr. Pibbs I had with my omelet than with having slept so decently the night before. (Sorry, Tylenol P.M.)
The highway from Laughlin to Vegas, passing only through the one-motel widespots of Searchlight and Cal-Nev-Ari, is a dark one. Eventually I became aware of the stars outside my window.
Every time I looked there were more stars. More stars. MORE STARS. Finally I had to pull over, roll down the window, and flip my head outside.
I couldn't close my mouth.
(To steal from Bossy's colouring book, it looked a little like the picture below.)
See, it was very beautiful.
Mike agreed, but then he said, politely (but still), that in Perth, even in the illuminated suburbs, this is how the sky looks when the moon is full.
I just kept twisting around, looking from horizon to zenith and side to side.
When I realized that "my fill" was beyond measuring, I started the car again and we drove quietly, listening to Queen. I thought about how I would be happy forever if I could have all of those stars with me every night. And I thought about how Mike gave up even more stars to come be with me.
Track 19 of our homemade Queen CD came on, which led to discussion of Track 20, a song I didn't know until a week ago. The car rolled on, and the stars stepped away from the fingers of Las Vegas light coming over the mountain. We passed the pet cemetery, or the stretch in the dark El Dorado Valley where we know it hides, reverently talking over each other... did Freddie Mercury mean the show must go on for him, or did he mean that the show must go on when he's gone, or did he mean both?
(The band used clips from old videos to make this. Freddie was too sick by then for a proper video.)
At lunch I found out one of my co-workers is leaving. I now wonder whether to try to pursue her job. (Enormous shoes to fill, but it would be good to change tack.)
Then, after the last bell rang, the new list of transfer positions came through. The high school near home is now posting three openings.
I guess I'm learning, I must be warmer now
I'll soon be turning, 'round the corner now
Outside the dawn is breaking
But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free
The show must go on
The show must go on
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