A One Hat Woman

Dear San Diego Hat Company,

A couple of years ago my husband gave me a hat made by you. He got it from Pangaea here in Nashville. It was gray and soft with a short bill and some very faint stripes on it. I think it might have been a wool blend. It was the best hat ever. I wore it all the time. If I find something I like, I stick with it for eternity. Take the belt I'm wearing, for example. I got it eight or nine years ago, I think, and I wear it with everything. It's black with red stars on it. It goes with everything. It does. I swear.

My gray hat went with everything. I've never seen one like it anywhere. I got innumerable compliments on it, too. It went with me. It was me.

And I seem to have lost it. I wore it the last time I went to get my hair cut a few days ago, and I must have dropped it while walking through the parking lot. My heart is broken. I don't see one in your catalog, but it was kind of a tiny bit like CTH1756. I am hoping you have one laying around a warehouse or a closet or something and that you'll contact me when someone gets a second to tell me whether or not you've got one.

I will pay infinite dollars for it because that's how much I love that hat, and if you ask for it, I'll try to scrounge it up, because I'll be honest with you, I'm just a low-paid editor at a publishing company. But that's how attached I am to that hat. I have no other hats. I'm a one-hat woman. If you don't have that particular hat, I know I'll end up searching for the rest of my life for a replacement, and I know, deep down, that I'll never find a substitute and will forever be unsatisfied in the head-gear department. There will be a hole in my heart in the shape of that soft, gray hat.

When I lose something I love, I never stop looking for it, I never cease to miss it, like my Birkenstock sandal that went down the creek when I was 17. It was the right foot. Have I replaced my Birkenstocks? Nope.

In summary, I will forever be loyal to this hat and to you, San Diego Hat Company. Thanks for making/designing good hats. I apologize for not knowing the style number for the hat I'm talking about. I have some pictures of me wearing the hat if you need to see them to know which one I'm looking for.

Thanks,

Nicole Grotepas

An Hour in Someone Else's Shoes (or, Photos.Wedding Dress.)

In an email to Stoker*:

The pictures went okay. I'm sooooo glad I'm not a model. What annoying work that would be. You know how we (as in anyone who’s not a model) look at models in advertisements for clothing and in catalogs and whatnot and think, "What shallow looking people." Or we think that sometimes, anyway. Well, if you’ve ever been the subject of a photo-shoot, that idea feels rather accurate and reinforced by the whole process of modeling and posing. I’d stand there in a position I thought the photographer wanted, feeling retarded, and then she'd leave her camera to come over and move my arms around and turn me and tilt my head and change the way I was holding the flowers and fluff my dress up. It was so bothersome and boring. The whole process wasn't great fun by any means, not to mention completely devoid of anything that could stimulate my brain (aside from the gorgeous landscape. But how long can I think about the landscape?). Then I'd start thinking things like, "Boy, I feel like a retard." Which led to, "Crap, don't think that, it'll show in my face or eyes."

So, what I mean is that standing there modeling, you're really like a puppet. They tell you how to hold your hands and arms and move you around like a claymation doll. So then you even feel like a puppet. Like you have no will of your own. And it was hard for me to let her control how I was doing things like holding the flowers. She'd start moving my arms and I'd feel them resisting and then I'd realize, "Oh, relax." But it was difficult. I didn't want to relax and let her move me around like I was an inanimate object.

And, not in the email to Stoker: The very fact that I just stood there while she moved me and directed me in how to stand…..well, it just serves my purpose. My purpose being to back up the argument that models are rather shallow people. How could any thinking (and I mean thinking, not thinking. The difference in my voice, if you could hear it, being the emphasis on the first thinking to imply that a person is given to deep thoughts of an analytical, critical and sometimes philosophical nature) person endure hours of that kind of work? While perhaps being rather light on the intellectual side, I will endorse the idea that models are probably very, very patient people. Able to take orders. And I don’t know, maybe the experienced ones really know what they’re doing and so they don’t have a photographer telling them how to stand, where to put their hands, whether or not they need to tilt their chin up, or down. I couldn’t do it. That’s all I know.

*Edited and altered to some degree. Much of the sappy stuff and sexual references removed. Joke. There were no sexual references. What do you take me for, anyway? Some bawdy, bar-room comedian?

Arrested Development

Who knows if they'll read it?

But I thought you might want to:

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Dear Fox Big-wigs or Lowly-interns,

I love Arrested Development. I've heard from several, concerned friends that there's a chance the show will be taken off the air. I hope this doesn't happen, but if it does, please find a way to keep the Bluth family alive.

I rarely watch television, except while working out at the gym after work and those are usually Friends reruns. So, I think it speaks highly of your show that I try to always tune in on Sunday nights. Or I watch the Season One dvd's during the weekdays when I'm unwinding, after a long, draining workday, with my equally television-show discriminating fiance (which is to say, I've allowed Arrested Development to enter my "sacred circle" of friends) . I've never been a big fan of television and while what prevails on it is (what I would call) the crap known as reality shows, the humor and character development of Arrested Development is the proverbial breath of fresh air. Ron Howard's steady narration is television-land's last vestige of hope, the anchor amidst the raucous winds of shock-crime-law-and-order-CSI-cutting-people's-guts-out-one-hour-dramas (did you get that? Kind of long and grueling, but then, that's how those shows feel).

So please continue your most intense efforts to keep the Bluths on the air. They kill me, even though you had Buster's hand bit off by a seal. What?


Your most sincere fan,


Nicole


p.s. "I punish thee!"

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Sign the save Arrested Development petition even if you don't watch it. What have you got to lose? Nothing. And you're doing me a favor.

Reunited: After 20 Years, I Rediscover William Shatner

Depressing.

So last night, while in my old town Logan (Utah), I stopped by my old haunt. Graywhale CD. While there, I purchased Fiona Apple’s Tidal for my lover (Stoker) and William Shatner’s album Has Been, for me.

I heard Has Been when it came out. It struck me, but I didn’t buy it. I heard it again on iTunes because I’m obsessed with that place—when they had Spaced Out! The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner on their home page (I want to get that too, some day). Anyhoo, haven’t been able to get the song “I can’t get behind that” out of my head. So I bought. And I love.

What’s depressing about that, you ask. I’ll tell you what’s depressing about that. It’s depressing because I think it’s damn good, and I want to tell good ole’ William that I think so. I want to be able to call William up and say, “William, I know you received some criticism and some people* made fun of you, but I want to tell you, maybe I am part of the ‘common people’** but I think it’s brilliant.” I’d like to be able to do that.

I’d also like to tell him that I really appreciate that he’s doing something. As you may know, because I told you, the title of his album is Has Been. But I don’t think he’s a has-been and maybe he’s just playing with that, capitalizing on the culture surrounding the idea that William Shatner is warshed up (yes, I said warshed, as in “y’alls need to get in thuh tub and warsh yuhselfs.”***). Since his days with Star Trek, he’s gotten a lot of criticism, you know, things like “Well, I heard William was a big jerk on the set, stealing lines and stuff all the time,” and etc. I don’t know if that’s true. But I’m willing to let bygones be bygones and say to hell with it. He’s doing something.

That’s my point. What I can’t get behind, is the jerks on stupid American Idol who suck and suddenly, one day the world is like “this guy is a superstar.” You know, because what can they do but stand on a stage and try to sing like annoying Mariah Carey? They sing songs someone else wrote, to music someone else composed, to instruments they can’t play. And here’s William Shatner talking (yes, not singing, because apparently he’s not like that) to music composed by Ben Folds. But here’s the tip of the point I’m trying to slowly make (brevity is the soul of wit), William Shatner is talking (because he’s not singing) from the heart. It’s real. And I love it.

So, William Shatner****, if you're reading, out there, somewhere in the cosmos of cyberspace, I want to tell you that Has Been defies expectations. It's poignant, moving, fun and I love it. I LOVE IT.


*Jerks.
** Though I really don’t think so, I think I’m extraordinary
***I have no idea if that’s a dialect anywhere except in my own head
****My first big crush as a 5 or 6 year old [wow, that’s super young to be thinking about being in love] [I know], catching every TJ Hooker episode. But alas, no longer