A surprising comedy about human consumption and Saran wrap

The bodies, compressed shoulder-to-shoulder, gut-to-gut, pulsate as one unit. Expanding with the inhale, quivering in anticipation with the exhale. Pacing from foot to foot, cheeks red and anxious, hovering over the Saran-wrapped pallet.

The bodies wait, staring at the immobile plastic mountain, elbows pressed outward to mark their space, their ranking in line based on who got there first. Hierarchy rules.

The supply is limited, which heightens the stress and competition. In this tight bubble, there is no room for sharing, no consideration for need. The poor and the greedy perch on the same branch, rewarded solely by their aggression and steady commitment to piercing the plastic barrier.

The bodies have been waiting weeks for the looming moment when the plastic is removed and they can possess the object underneath. This is important. Pivotal.

I have been here before.
It is 2008. I stand in the center of a circle on a refugee camp in Uganda, my hand on a plastic-covered stack of pink mosquito nets that we are distributing. This part of the world has one of the highest death tolls by malaria -- one child dies every 30 seconds from this preventable, mosquito-borne illness.

Mothers wearing dirty babies press toward the thin rope that we strung between trees, hoping to create some semblance of order. At first, it works. But as time crawls on, the tension swells. I hear the crowd growing in my ears, like a rabid dog pushed into the corner. I try to stay calm, to somehow send peace across the crowd.

But the dirt-lined faces begin spitting at me, shouting and demanding. They are sick of waiting. I rationalize with myself, knowing that I am here out of love, knowing that fear is the opposite of love. I reject the fear. Breathing. Breathe. I summon compassion, for the refugees' suffering, for their desperation. They are fighting to survive. I stand still and accept their anger, words slapping my face like cold, open palms. Now fists.

A sharp hand claws a mosquito net out of my hands, and the man runs away like a frightened thief. He thinks there are not enough nets, and this is a matter of life or death. I feel a chill rise, and with the crescendo, the crowd bursts through the rope barrier, a sea of despondency. The levy breaks.

I frantically look for an exit out of the mob. Claws, ripping, my heart chokes in my throat. I have no saliva. In its place, the rusty taste of fear. The riot explodes at my feet. I scream and tear for any exit, through arms and faces and sweat. With the next pound of my heartbeat, I suddenly understand the fight for life or death.

Ah yes. I have seen this before.
I look across the crowd, anxious bodies, circling a mountain of plastic-wrapped goods. Only this time, I am staying on the outside of the throng.

And this time, the mob swarms around a stack of DVD players that are discounted 70 percent for Black Friday.

This time, the mob is fighting for -- what?

I laugh.

Unplugged

Boulder is the third-techiest city in the nation, according to a TechAmerica Foundation report.
And we would be in first place if I weren't throwing off the curve. Ask my office's IT guys; I crash computers by looking at them. I should just start carving my articles into rocks.

While prepping for a recent party, I realized our boombox was broken. Well, I lost the cord, and I didn't want to look for batteries. So I sent an e-mail (very high tech) to several friends asking them to bring some good CDs to play from our DVD player (fancy) through the TV (some might also refer to this device as a "television set").

That is when it came to my attention that no one listens to these small silver circles of ever-
scratched plastic anymore. My friend Jess put it gently: "I can burn you some CDs from my iPod, I guess." Burn. Pod. Help. I was so out of my league.

Jess is the same friend who gave me a laptop she didn't want anymore because she was sick of me responding to her Facebook Evites three weeks past event date. That meant I also had to get the World Wide Internets in my house. When I signed up (it took three months), Comcast offered cable TV, too. I said no thanks, but we were satisfied with our bunny-ears antenna with crushed PBR cans on the ends (tech tip: they work excellent to boost the signal).

If you think I'm ignoring the photo you sent me of your engagement ring or new flip phone blackberry 32L network pad pod (see, I can't even come up with a fake product name), I'm not. I just don't get pictures on my Sanyo Qualcomm 3G CDMA, which came with my $35 per month contract. But feel free to post a "digital photo" on my "Facebook wall." I've been known to check that every two weeks, now that I have the Information Superhighway running through my very own house.

Just pretend I'm your grandmother. Ten years ago.

Photo by Flickr user kitakitts.

Brittany: How we got punked by an 80-year-old

The judgmental smirk from the older woman walking past our table tipped me off. We had Lola all wrong.

My BFF Brittany and I were stuffing lo mein into our mouth-holes at a Chinese restaurant called Golden Heaven Gate Red Dragon Lotus (or some arrangement of those six key words). Coming off a tumultuous week, we'd decided to kick the fun up a notch and sarcastically sport two extra-special Christmas sweaters to our lunch festivities.

Brittany's grandma, Lola, had recently given her the two sweaters, disclaiming that Brittany "might be out and about a bit more and need them."

Thoughtful, yes. The problem? Let's start with the looming sequin tree dominating the front of the boxy, thick red fabric; the star made a precise nipple bull's eye. And the decorative jingle bells. And the silver tinsel. And. And. And.

It felt a little National Lampoonish (where grandma wraps up her live cat as a present). Yet Lola, 80, was distinctly no Griswold. In fact, when she gave Brittany the sweaters, she, herself, was wearing skinny jeans under knee-high boots and a classy white blouse with a subtle holly embroidered on the collar.

Curious.

Thinking about it, we'd never seen Lola wear anything like the nipple-star sweater. She looked like a movie star, from her still-pristine complexion to her signature necklace -- a cross that rivals 50 Cent, formed out of all of her old wedding bands ("reshaped into love for Jesus"). The exact number of diamonds is unclear, but let's just say any self-respecting rapper would be glittering with envy. I know I was.

Trying to piece this growing mystery together, Brittany and I began tracing back the gifts her grandma had given her over the years.

It started with a calculator with multi-colored gemstones instead of numbers. ("Probably why I'm so bad at math today," Brittany explains.) Then there were the purple bedazzled sunglasses with lenses in the shape of butterflies.

"These reminded me of something you might like," Lola had told Brittany.

When Brittany received a shapeless mauve winter jacket one year, Brittany noticed her grandma was wearing a fitted, trendy, double-breasted military-style coat. Then two years ago,

Lola gifted two ballcaps, smothered and heaving in multi-colored sequins because "I thought these might be of use to you."

We had laughed it off as just one of those bizarre gifts that grandmas give.

But on this day, at Heaven's Dragon Gate Golden Red Lotus, I looked at what Brittany was wearing -- underneath her sparkling jinglesweater: a royal blue dress from Forever 21, with a modest scattering of sequins on the shoulders.

That's when a woman about Lola's age walked past our table and looked us up and down, in unmasked horror.

Lola had never been spotted in sequins or insect-shaped sunnies. She wore over-the-knee boots three years before they hit the runways, military-style jackets and classy blouses. "These reminded me of something you might like." "I thought these might be of use to you."

Oh, my Golden Girls. Heavens to Betsy. I gasped.

Here we thought we were so hilarious, wearing Lola's ugly Christmas sweaters out to lunch. But this chic grandma was the one really laughing. At her granddaughter's garish style. Her gifts over the years had actually been gags.

And that's how we got punked by an 80-year-old.

Photo by Flickr user Robby Mueller.

Sometimes it's just sexier to be fake

The fire tickled the fresh-cut logs, as the scent of isolation painted the cabin with cozy stillness.

My new husband and I, obnoxiously sappy amid the first 48 hours of our marriage, stepped over the threshold (a word only acknowledged by new brides, never to be used again) of the mountain retreat that was our honeymoon.

Visions of sugarplums, porch swings, bird songs and calling each other "schmoopy" in the shadows of the fireplace danced through my head. No cell service or Internet. Just a stack of books, a teapot, my beloved and... two terrified eyes gaping at me from a decapitated head that had been nailed to the wall.

It wasn't the remnants of a voodoo ceremony or an ancient Roman battle. It was a bobcat. And an elk. And a deer. And a zoo of hunting trophies, paralyzed in their death for decorative purposes.

Now, I'm not committed enough to be an activist or rich enough to be a Boulderite or a vegan. I grew up in the mountains and learned how to brandish a shotgun before I could dress myself.
I've killed a snake with a shovel and eaten elk jerky and even Rocky Mountain oysters.

I just think it's gross to hang them on my body.

Decorating your house with preserved carcasses is like wearing a real fur coat or snakeskin boots. My closet is more sparkly and impractical than a Vegas showgirl's bustier, but it is not deceased. I own a floor-length faux fur black cape, a fake fur hand muff, and I recently acquired an Urban Outfitters coat made entirely out of fake feathers (which, according to the drunk guys who stopped me on New Year's Eve, actually looks like woolly mammoth or perhaps pterodactyl).

My closet boasts more faux leather skirts and corsets than food crumbs stuck in all of the Hell's Angels' beards combined. And I have enough fake snakeskin to clothe a fake python long enough to fake squeeze a fake elephant to fake death -- and subsequently enough of said elephant's imitation ivory jewelry to build a tower for at least half of Boulder to sit in.

My statement isn't political; it's fashionable. We are not cavemen, so we have options to not have to rub against rotting bones, flesh and fur of dead animals. Why don't we crystallize livers and hang them from our earlobes, or concoct an entire dress out of meat slabs? Oh wait, Lady Gaga did.

Let me explain something here.

When I first met my husband, before that one day I used the word "threshold," his mutt of a dog, Stitch, was almost a deal-breaker. Stitch is like Pig-Pen from Charlie Brown, except instead of dust, she constantly walks in a cloud of white dog fluff. If I try to sweep up her hair, before I get to the dustpan, the hair has already regenerated in every corner -- even if Stitch is locked outside. She actually drops tiny hair seed pods, which procreate when they touch oxygen and then multiply exponentially, like Gremlins, or H1N1, or the terrifying trend of jeggings.

More than half of my waking hours are spent trying to escape animal fur; the idea of intentionally swathing my body with it makes me twitch.

I am sure there are more profound reasons to protest fur apparel, just like I'm sure Lady Gaga had some underlying sanity to her bloody steak suit. But for me, I've got enough leverage to stand my ground on the mere evolution out of the Neanderthal and into a species with more options, and better-smelling synthetics. Ones that don't spy on you with shell-shocked, frozen eyeballs while you're trying to get your honeymoon on.

Perverted bobcats.

Laura: Some things you never outgrow

The rent-a-cops at the hotel couldn't prove it, but they kicked Laura out anyway. On New Year's Eve, at 9:30 p.m., they sent her packing to the ice-rink of I-25.

It would have been tragic if we hadn't had 20 years of practice handling, and thereby laughing at, fashion-related adversity.

Laura and I were both straight-A students who grew up to be intelligent, respectable mothers with clean houses, emptied dishwashers and a regular stream of elaborate dinners that make
Martha Stewart look as lame as Colonel Sanders (OK, that last part is jut Laura, but I'm taking credit by association).

Except somehow when it comes to anything fashion related. Then we become terrorists.
Take New Year's. Granted, the security guards had their eyes on us, after they physically removed us from the life-sized gingerbread house for trying to consume the candy corn fireplace (apparently this "stressed out the children").

But don't build a glass elevator running through the middle of a hotel if you don't -- how do I phrase this? -- expect teenage boys to seize the opportunity when a woman wearing a short pink satin dress takes said elevator, and, unthinking, leans against the glass.*

If you ask me, the po-po should have kicked out the horrible teenage boys.

*For written record, this is exactly how the events unfolded, and no other possible way.

Perhaps Laura and I have bad luck. For example, in seventh grade when her mom asked us to paint the living room, how were we supposed to know that she wanted white paint and not bright orange? I thought we were overachieving by including the doors, hinges, light switches, trim and even some of the floor. Who knew her mom would cry?

This incident sent me into a spiral of rebelliousness against walls. At school, every time I went to the ladies room to apply lipstick (three times per passing period), I kissed the wall to dab off excess color. Soon, I had created an elaborate collage of pink smooches across the vast wall of blue tile.

Not even the notes the custodian left deterred me; first, pleas of cessation, explaining how difficult it was to remove dried Mauve Magic. Then, a sign announced that the walls were being washed with toilet water. Pssh. I actually kissed a toilet that day to make a statement about my untouchable insubordination. Looking back, there might have been a less hepatitis-y way to make my point, which I guess was, "I am the master of all walls, and the toilet."

Toilet water could not restrain my lips, but in-house detention eventually did.

A few weeks later, a substitute teacher said she smelled alcohol in my locker. "Yes, of course you do," I confessed cockily, and pulled out the bottle for her to see: Aquanet. Duh. I sprayed it in her face, to give her a good whiff.

I got sent to detention, which was whatever because I was already in detention for stealing an ID card from the library Rolodex (for you youthful whippersnappers who don't know what a "Rolodex" is for, well, neither do I) of the boy I had a crush on. Luke was cool because he had a puffy Buffalo Bills Starter jacket. He wore that jacket in his library picture. I needed it -- to kiss, now that I was banned from using the bathroom at school.

Detention wasn't half-bad, because there I could hang out with Laura. This time she was there due to controversial school pictures. Laura, whose parents were super strict (who wouldn't be after the orange paint incident?), left the house wearing a ribbed turtleneck and overalls. But by the time she got up to the front of the line for class pictures, she was sporting a midriff-baring lace shirt that would only be acceptable on an actual prostitute.

These photos remain immortalized in the yearbook today. Which makes the three days in the detention room totally worth it.

Of course, now that we're all grown up, we have risen above our troubled pasts, or at least we have better excuses.

Like it was the seamstress's fault for not sewing a tighter seam up the back of Laura's pants. Otherwise, they wouldn't have busted when she dropped it like it's hot. Twice.

And David's Bridal should make higher quality dyeable heels. Otherwise, Laura wouldn't get in trouble at a wedding for pounding her shoe against the wall, to try to repair the nail in the heel. Three times.

Luckily, over the years, Laura's mom has forgotten about the offensive paint job. Laura helped divert her mom's attention by meeting her at church, smoking a cigar and wearing a T-shirt that said, "I kissed your girlfriend."

At least it wasn't a lace crop top. See? A lesson learned.

Reba: Home weird home

Reba is weird. I love her.

Reba's apartment is a museum of the world's most amusing flea market items. It's a gallery of conversation pieces. It is, in and of itself, a work of art.

Public speaker Patricia Fripp once said style is being yourself, but on purpose. My childhood friend Reba's home is like diving inside her beautifully mad brain and backstroking across her dreams. It's the most alive building I've ever walked through, a character. And a dangerous inspiration.

Reba's living room boasts not one, but two, sets of mannequin legs. One rests upside down between the green nightstand, barely wide enough to support her television, and Charlie McCarthy, the ventriloquist doll, who I simultaneously want to hug and set on fire.

Full-scale skeletons dance on Reba's walls year-round, along with a sad clown portrait made out of yarn, various robots, a picture of a dog in a tuxedo and an oversized landscape of a German castle. She uses old doors for picture frames and a newspaper rack for dishes.

On some street in Oregon that I forget but it was cool. Being stalked by a cardboard wolf.

 

She adorned her kitchen table -- and four mismatched chairs -- with decoupaged coffee bags, and she let her 6-year-old son, River, decorate the bottom of the table. He chose hundreds of googley eyeballs. When new people visit, Reba excitedly ushers them under the table to lie and gaze at her son's creation.

Spend 10 minutes in this apartment and you'll feel like you've known Reba for 20 years. It's the opposite of a beige Pottery Barn showroom house that could be anyone's. Reba's house couldn't
be anyone else's. That's what makes it so glorious.

I visited her in Oregon last week, and returned home to an office that had relocated from a 120-year-old station on the Pearl Street Mall to a modern business park in east Boulder. At the new desk, first I noticed the cleanliness (more than a century of newsprint, yellowed papers and journalist tears really crusts up a place). Then, I jumped out of my chair. This order was uncomfortable. My desk needed flair. And a little crust. Just enough for character.

My first reaction was to hit up one of the Pearl Street shops that I've grown addicted to over the past 10 years (gross, I'm old) at the Daily Camera. Urban Outfitters. Goldmine Vintage. But that was no longer my 'hood. I wept three tears.

I needed to trailblaze east Boulder, like Christopher Columbus blazed the Atlantic, or like Russell Brand explored every woman east of Wales.

My sense of adventure and lack of finances led me to the Salvation Army on 33rd Street. After I ran across a cookbook so ancient that it was growing a new variation of mushrooms, I knew I was home.

My house, albeit lacking eyeballs on the underside of the table, has its own energy. Obnoxiously bright walls, furniture from the 1950s and '60s and even pictures of a glittery unicorn and a hologram wolf (both gifts) (amazing). I'll never claim my house is immaculate, and I'll never pretend I'm rich. But I am proud of my odd little nest that reads about me like my own palm.

At the Salvation Army, I found records for 49 cents each. Frames for $1.30. Books for 49 cents. I almost bought three dozen Chinese literature books (for the colorful pictures of birds and mustached men), but instead, I opted for two Whitman classical books, printed in 1955. Ever blasphemous, I ripped out my favorite sketches from "Five Little Peppers" -- of a girl crying, burglars breaking into a house and a gaggle of kids writing a letter -- and I framed them.

Nearby on my desk, I hung three record covers that make me laugh, including "Sing Along with the Honkey-Tonks," and I bought an old milk pitcher to hold my pens. I found a wooden jewelry box to organize my office supplies (paper clips, sticky notes and lipsticks). I used the records to divide up my desk. The grand revamp: $8.45.

As I complete my first article in the Camera's new quarters, I feel a little greedy, like I get the best of both worlds: a modern office without asbestos flaking into my tea, and a little old-fashioned weirdness, to remind me of where we came from.

I even decorated the underside of my desk, in honor of River. Feel free to peek under there. The carpet's clean of journalist sludge.



At least for now.

Clayton: Grin and beard it

Mustaches aren't funny anymore. There. I said it.

No more mustache theme parties. No more moustachio-etched coffee mugs or pink stick-on crumb-catchers. I am calling for an end to 'stachical jewelry and stickers, and even requesting the removal of all mustache tattoos on the inside of the pointer finger. I never want to see another sarcastic soup-strainer, I swear. Even though they still make me chuckle. At some point, the nose bug has to lose its funny.

Doesn't it?

Why does the fuzzy upper lip tickle me so, metaphorically and literally? Perhaps it's a passive anti-bourgeoisie statement (because everyone knows all bosses have mustaches, even the women). The nose-tickler denotes control: Hulk Hogan, Magnum P.I., Josef Stalin. Could there be some underlying rebellion rising with this unstoppable trend?

Or is facial hair just plain amusing?

Supporting the latter is my friend Clayton. His wife, Alex, wanted him to grow Elvis sideburns. He wanted a Groucho Marx. The end result was a hybrid of the two, a sort of Sgt. Floyd Pepper from the Muppets. A burnstache. Mustchops.

Clayton grew in a wee soul patch under his bottom lip, just to get wild. He ended up with hair everywhere except his lower jawbones, or the opposite of K-Fed's famous pencil-thin, chin-strap (also known as the "douche beard"). When asked about his unique scruff, Clayton explained that it had been "originally popularized by a U.S. president in the 1800s," if a trend can still be considered popularized 200 years later.

Coincidentally -- purely -- Clayton is also beardbald on his lower jaw area. As far as I can tell, most guys suffer this ailment, where a peculiar patch on their face has zero hair follicles. My husband's is next to his left ear, which results in one Vanilla Ice sideburn, with lines and zigzags naturally shaved in. This has not, however, stopped him from occasionally growing them out.

The plus side: I never have to fear my man attempting the lumberjack fave: mutton chops.

Options for facial hair designs are only limited by a man's imagination (well, and his blank spots).

In a "quest for every beard," blogger Jon Dyer experimented with 42 different scruff styles (dyers.org/blog/beards/beard-types), including a few rarer species, such as the Hollywoodian (mustache-beard sans sideburns). Dyer calls himself an annual winter beard-wearer and active celebrator of not only Octobeard and No Shave November, but also December's MaBeGroMo (Macho Beard Growing Month, which he created himself).

"Growing a beard is one of the simplest, zero-effort, macho things you can do," he writes on his blog.

When selecting your beard style, experts recommend complimenting your face shape. Let it grow for two weeks, and then re-examine your creation, according to eHow.com. At this point, the Web site says, you will have experience two bouts of itching and you possibly look homeless.

Considering your follicular strengths, choose a style. A weak stache? Opt for the Lincoln. Bare cheeks? A goatee is your friend.

Are your strengths on the edges of your face? If so, grow it long and flowy, a la Amish, or if you want to get beat up all the time, step into the chin strap. Feeling innovative? Shave everything except the edges, sideburns and then shave your head, except for your bangs. Voila -- you've mastered the Hair Ring of Fire. I'm pretty sure that was popularized by a red-headed U.S. Secretary of State in the 1700s.

With options like that, how can anyone ever laugh at Tom Selleck again?

Important vocabulary
Increase your knowledge and impress your friends by incorporating these terms into your daily life. Source: Urbandictionary.com.

Stache-ism: Prejudice or discrimination toward individuals with mustaches.

Beard Goggles: When you see a man with a beard, and you automatically think that person is awesome, funny, chill or just an overall cool dude just because he has a beard.

Beard of Shame: The beard that a man will grow after his girlfriend has broken up with him.

Photo by Bill Hogan.