We're All Mad Here » Shell’s Life

02-17-11

Frakit, I am NOT an Urban Homesteader

I used to consider myself one, at one point. Now I live vicariously through other’s gardens. Like the lemon grass in the water glass I left in Pittsburgh for my mom, or the new landscaping in my dad’s front yard. My sister looked at me like I was insane when I pointed to the rosemary next to pansies next to roses and told her she could eat most of it.

Today I realized I’m not.
In my heart I’m still a gardener, and gardeners are versatile. Much like my Grandfather was and his grandfather before him, be it a farm or a plant in a tin can on a window ledge. Take one Polish farmer and an equally bullheaded plant and you have the beginnings of a beautiful relationship. That relationship is a very different thing than the beast that I saw today.

The point is, Urban Homesteading/Garden/Agriculture has been around for ages. Today I found out the Path to Freedom people trademarked the term “Urban Homesteader” and have been hammering down on bloggers and business owners. The irony is that the majority of their success is from the people who they are now turning against. The movement spread because of bloggers, so their success (THEIRS, not the movement. That started during the agricultural revolution) spread because of the same people they are oustracizing now. They have forgotten their community.

The community is turning against them
I’m watching the social movement take place now: a facebook page with 1500 people in 24 hours. Twitter trended #dervaes and #urbanhomestead, even the petition that I started. The first few hours were intense, things were moving forward, we were all coming together to define what we felt and share our gardens. Change was in the air. Our fellow homesteaders who were attacked would soon be able to talk about their passions again.

Then something changed.
People stopped thinking, they lost track of what the community was and of the spirit that brought us together. The knee jerk reactions started. The name calling, the religion bashing and the energy of the community ignited into flames with the intensity I would imagine gasoline on a lake has. People began spiting anger in there posts, others started taking personal credit as opposed to acknowledging the community movement as a whole. People were quick to add their two cents but no one offered up solutions. The group started focusing on benchmarks and even benchmarks could not motivate them to act productively. I filtered rage out of the comments of the petition.

We didn’t try to rebuild, we didn’t try to help those whose accounts had been lost to the great and powerful FbOz. They called them nut-jobs, said they wouldn’t budge but nobody tried. They didn’t care about change, they focused on publicity and growth. BB fueled the fire. We became them.

Then it became a political statement about the Electronic Frontier Foundation and C.O.I.C.A. and that is where I broke.

It was hostility. It was manic. and with one swift “unlike” I left.

I walked passed the pansies today with their giant smiling faces tipped towards the sun. This is what it’s about, call it what you want to call it.

01-31-11

Dating = 404

Errand running with Darc yesterday, we were on our way to the mall and taking quizzes on her phone (she was also introducing me to pop music, have you heard of this Ke$ha chick? yikes). At the end of the “What is your dating style?” quiz, I found out that I needed to carve out time to actually accomplish more dating before it could give me an answer. That was it’s answer: You are too busy to date which was ironic b/c it didn’t ask me anything about my time management skills. It asked me what I do when I go to clubs (yeah, right) and how I hook up with the cute guy from work (once was enough to learn why they say not to do that) and something about online dating profiles.

That’s when I found myself thinking I needed to schedule in time to look at my schedule and see where I could schedule in dating time (yes, scheduling time to schedule)…I knew I had a problem.

What I needed to do was learn how to focus and say no. So that is what I spent the day doing: focusing and saying no. First I focused: goals, needs, wants, hobbies. I made my K.O. lists. Then I started weeding it out: no to new clients, no to new dates (with people I was unsure about, trust your gut), no to distractions. Weeding days always make me exhausted.

01-12-11

on Etiquette

I’m having so many problems with this right now. First off, the book is 845 pps long. Secondly it’s on etiquette. It has sections on how to properly eat a Taco. It has nothing on technology minus the following entry in the index:

Electronic Communication
audio and video cassettes
electronic mail (E-mail)
facsimile machines

and it sends me to a section titled ”Older Couple’s Weddings” when cross referencing Second Marriages. It was written in1997. CD-Rs were introduced in 1990, mind you.

12-27-10

Hub Caps and Tail Lights

Say what you will about technology, but the beatnik-inspired jazz wafting from the record player in the corner is intoxicating. The smell of the cover, the feel of it’s black weight in my hands, the approximate 26 minutes I have until I have to stand up, pry myself away from my writing and flip the disk over, the scratchy grit of the audio. The bass is perfect. “Hub Caps and Tail Lights” comes on: a rich, meaty burlesque. Show me something as sensual as this relationship with an iPod, I dare you.

12-25-10

Dear San Diego,

143 77345

12-18-10

Untitled Josh Berman Blog Entry, Take 1

I drug my butt back to the freezing warehouse the next day, mostly out of curiosity than the need to achieve some form of “success” in my brief career in the entertainment industry. I regretted it the moment I stepped into the back lot surrounded by mobile changing rooms, food carts and wardrobe trailers.

SCENE 1: Flashback – 2 nights prior

I crawled through the front door of the hippy commune where I was staying in Atlanta after I had broken up with my boyfriend. The rest of my life there had just dropped out from under me as of 20 minutes ago. Tear stained cheeks, carrying my belongings from my desk at the job I just left, I rushed passed the yard chickens as they greeted me with a friendly “bagawk”. My neighbor intercepted my retreat into my room.

“I can put you to work tomorrow, it’s a Cagney and Lacey sort of thing,” he said in his usual coke-ish induced frenzy. My neighbor was a casting director: I knew what I was getting myself in to. I listened to him bitch a few weeks before about unreliable extras during the Footloose 2 project when I offered to help him find replacements. I repeat: I knew full well what I was getting myself into.

Every inch of my body screamed “NO! You don’t ACTUALLY need the money THAT badly.” Every inch except for my curiosity, which said “Well, you’ve never done THAT before.” Curiosity was the same reason I was in Atlanta, in tears and standing in a hippy commune to begin with. Curiosity leads me to great stories, and often by way of great pain. Of course curiosity beat logic to my lips.

SCENE 2: Flash forward to the day after Scene 1 but not nearly to the present where we first met our heroine, so it’s still Flashback* – Day 1 of Filming

The next day I stood in faux Police HQs in the middle of a warehouse in downtown Atlanta dressed as a San Diego PD chick. I played a cop called “Tucker” which was ironic considering that most of my day was spent tucking my shirt back into a pair of pants as the 30lb prop holster at my waist drug everything dangerously close to the ground.

I was surrounded by polyester, makeup, hairspray, booby pins, an angry female director, Lou Diamond Phillips, the chick from Sopranos, and the blond doctor from ER…none of whom I recognized until I went home and did some research three days later.

I was willing my body to stop shaking from the cold long enough to make it between the “Action” and “Cut” calls. It was miserable. 16 hours of freezing temperatures and chattel-like environments, I was more than ready to go home and stop being painfully aware of every movement and position my body was in. Between the hours, conditions and TMZ, believe me when I say actors deserve every penny of the gazillions of dollars they make. I envy them not.

I was counting down the minutes till I could leave when I caught Hell approaching me from across the set. Hell was a gorgeous Miamian named Oscar. He came up to me, asked me to see my hands. He pulled out a smartphone and and compared them to a picture on the display.

“It’s close, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I replied, “there’s no wedding ring.”

“We can fix that”

“That’s what they all say.” An hour later I was scheduled to come back the following day as a body double for the blond ER chick.

SCENE 3: We return to our heroine on the third day of the story

I returned the next day. They stuck a wedding band on my finger. It was a beautiful cheap metal thing with ironic embellishment. I chuckled as I snapped a photo of it in the bathroom on break. I had moved into the hippy commune a few weeks prior after dissolving a relationship with a previous a boy who wouldn’t give me a ring which started after dissolving a previous relationship with a boy who wouldn’t give me a ring as well. I’m not a married woman but I play one on TV.

As a body double, I was treated to the freedom to wonder around set on my own accord. I wondered passed the holding bin where the extras from the previous day peered out at me longingly. I smiled sheepishly and ran off to my next shot. I made a total of 56 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and 15 turkey sandwiches that day in order to get the “Oscar (The award, not the hell) Winning Untitled Josh Berman Peanut Butter Scene” wrapped.

The next shots were close ups of chase scenes. Oscar played the boy parts, I played the girls. You remember Oscar: Hell from the day before? He actually is Asst. Dir. on the Burn Notice series and a notorious camera attention whore. That’s right kiddos, Burn Notice… my 7 steps to Bruce Campbell just got a whole lot smaller. In fact, I am now only one step away and that one step has seen me in my undergotchies. Eh…one explanation coming right up:

I didn’t look like either of the actresses I doubled for and I didn’t fit their clothes, either. Chase scenes are AMAZINGLY fun. Chase scenes in clothes that are too small are even more fun. I sat with my pants down around my knees (guess who isn’t union?) as Oscar and a few other crew members smirked down at me from outside the car and the videographer leaned down between my legs to get a shoot of my foot stomping the gas peddle. In another scene, in another car I was wedged inside a rental SUV with a huge stage light in the passenger seat and more boys between my legs in completely professional scenarios.

“Ok, your husband just told you he wants a divorce, you’re backing over his (item I can’t disclose). Got it?”

“Oh, I got this in the bag.” I smirked as I threw the car into reverse with Academy Award winning gusto. I could already hear my acceptance speech in my head.

*This film stuff get’s tricky.

12-14-10

2010 Collection of Moments

I’m leaving on a jet plane, or cowboy take me away? Either way in two days I’ll be leaving the snowy hillsides of Western PA bound south once again. This time just outside the flat industrial wasteland of Houston where the horizon meets the waters of Clear Lake. The land of sail boats, sweet tea and NASA.

The last year has been a whirl wind. I’ve found myself at first the unwitting traveler in the beginning. Now as the year comes to a close, I hope the next year keeps the same pace of change and voice and hope. I want to count it down, reminisce with a microblog of my favorite moments.

1. Sebastian, FL: The bare strand that attaches me to the tiny sea village snaps. At the back door of my shop listening to Monsters of Folk watching pines.

2. Melbourne, FL: Visit the Otters one last time.

3. Vero Beach, FL: Ride Lola over the bridge, grab dinner amongst the eclectic collection of Mr. Sexton and accompany my bike helmet as a date to the theatre.

4. Atlanta, GA: Sit in a rainstorm on the lawn of the Gardens listening to She & Him with a boy who was passing through for a moment.

5. Columbus, GA: Visit Fort Benning as a conscientious observer instead of a conscientious objector. Learn.

6. Roswell, GA: Conquer my fear of dogs and damns as I hike through the kutzu and remnants of an old cotton mill destroyed during the Civil War.

7. Sandy Springs, GA: Grow my own figs, translate directions into Korean via iPhone for a little lost lady on the T.

8. Panama City, FL: Learn about life on an air force base.

9. Little Five Points, GA: Sip tea and watch: cats in the alley, dogs at my feet, artists on the streets, hipsters in a bar. Fall in love with stories.

10. Candler Park, GA: Sip tea & knit at night on the lawn of the hippy commune, listening to the drum circle in the distance. Squirrel induced pecan showers.

11. Decatur, GA: Art, stories, wine, songs and humility at a dinner party in a cottage in the woods.

12. Douglas, GA: Escaped Atlanta with little more than a bruised arm and dignity. Kick off the road trip by helping a lost woman w dementia escape the cold.

13. Saint Augustine, FL: Sip Stella across from Flagler College. Bask in the sun and Spanish architecture.

14. Fort Pierce, FL: Throw some things into a room at a friends house. More to this than I can justify in words at the moment.

15. Daytona, FL: Mom freaks out at the sight of the speedway. Realize how cute she is.

16. Savannah, GA: Redefine memories, explore a tall ship.

17. Beckley, WV: Dine with my mom amongst the art shops of Tamarck, our roadtrip comes to an end.

18. Volant, PA: Relive one of my favorite adventures in the area.

19. Pittsburgh, PA: Explore the streets in the rain, grab tea at my favorite indy-art-space-turned-coffee-shop and people watch on my favorite streets.

20. Edgewood, PA: Walk with the artist boy from the past through the Park. Disappear back into history where we came from.

21. Colombiana, OH: Get lost in a corn maze, have the most awesome, intense, innocent first hand holding moment EVER.

22. Wheeling, WV: Drive through the Festival of Lights reliving my favorite Christmas tradition of my youth.

23. Beaver, PA: Surrounded by good friends, good food and good wine at a table in the window talking about High School.

24. Odessa, DE: Watch the fife and drum corps from the window of my friend’s historic home during the Christmas festival.

25. Bethany Beach, DE: Breakfast, teas and chicken and waffles and seaweed with a good friend Decorating Christmas tree and watching specials.

26. Rehoboth Beach, DE: The best focaccia bread EVER from the farmer’s market. Lunch at the Green Man.

27. Ocean City, MD: dime machines, skee ball and photo booth. ‘Nuff said.

28. Milton, DE: Crazy tree, crazy brewery, crazy small alcohol tolerance.

29. New Brighton, PA: Dinner and movies at my aunt’s house. Fruit of the Forest pie.

30. Houston, TX

11-17-10

Sticky

“What do we like?” “Clean, safe routines, guaranteed to stick” ~Stick It.

First and foremost: yes, I am watching Stick It. Lead flippy girl is hot, and hot flippy girls doing flips is hot. Flipping, smart ass hot girls are an excellent distraction from what needs to be done. What needs to be done? Everything, because everything was a gamble. You threw it on the table because it just didn’t matter anymore, and the freedom that comes with nothing was much more appealing than everything in your hand.

Losing faith in the middle of throwing everything in a round of roulette is harrowing. I don’t recommend it, but I don’t recommend not trying it at least one. My life right now represents my current exercise in pursuing the unsafe. Nothing is guaranteed to stick, but try enough routes to the ultimate goal and you are bound to find something with a sticky nature. That’s the right path. Now you pursue it, study it, analyze it’s stickiness and build on it. Find out how it works, why it works and how it could work better. Stoop and build it back up with worn out tools. (Kipling, dude, Kipling)

Don’t lose faith. Don’t ever lose faith. At the bottom of faith lies an empty grave just waiting to suck you in: mortal and nameless. So you want me to write? You want me to help people? Fine. Just give me a sign of what to build on next. Show me the sticky.

~ Shell

P.S. Did all this talk about sticky things turn you on a bit?

11-16-10

Dear Juniata,

Dear JC,

As much as I am honored to be on your list of all time student achievers, I am not, nor have I ever been married. Funneh story behind that one, see. I’ll explain it to you one day. Now that I’m almost a year out, the newest addition to my “Things That Suck First Thing in the Morning” list include finding your fact checking is as flawed as the main stream medias’ at the moment. So please remove my assumed last name from your website.

As for any future plans of matrimony in my future, well, all I can say is “catch me if you can.”

kthxbia,

Shell