My Daily Posts Have Gone Away...

"... but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers."

Composing Lola will officially be on hiatus until the beginning of August.

I've been super busy with moving and working two jobs, and I will not have regular internet access for a couple of weeks. So, the blog and I have decided to spend a little time apart (we're not going to be seeing other people or anything, though, don't worry.)

I'll be looking forward to returning to my daily posts. I hope you will too.

In the meantime, please enjoy this old picture of me in my college dorm room:

Request Week: Day 4

Hello!

My friend Dave's request: "....dinosaur on rollerskates, being ridden by a fez-wearing shark"

Feast your eyes, sir!

The tyrannosaurus had learned much from his partnership with the shark but, tragically, he had also inherited one of his ally's fatal flaws:

If he ever stopped skating, he would die.

Request Week: Day 3

After a day off, request week continues.

George suggested that I draw "A sad monkey with his arm around a bottle of scotch."

 A tragic misunderstanding of the concept of evolution drove Kyle to the bottle. He waited, with dread in his heart, for the day he would turn into a human.

Request Week: Day 2

Today's blog is in answer to Miss Kolleen's request that I draw a "ballerina horse".

The other horses laughed when Deborah said she wanted to be a ballerina. But Deborah showed the world that a dancing horse is no laughing matter.

I Bow to Your Facebook Requests

Yesterday I posted the following status update on my Facebook page:

"dying my hair red. i look like carrie after being crowned prom queen."

My friend Rob subsequently insisted that I post a "pic of the red hair". Here you go, Rob:

A closer look:

Maybe I'll even post a photograph for Rob at some point.

Also on Facebook, I asked for suggestions as to what I should draw for my blog entry tonight. My friend Dean observed that I should probably draw a picture of him.

Here it is:

You can tell it's Dean because of the soul patch and also because of the name Dean. In addition, I captured some of Dean's most noticeable distinguishing features: Head, body, arms.

Lazy Sunday Hasty Photo: My Favorite Childhood Snack

 

I built up a tolerance to Spic and Span as a stepping stone before moving on to iocaine powder.

Sesame Street Choppers

This photograph of my sister and I was taken at Sesame Place in Pennsylvania:

If you lean in close enough to your computer, you can hear what the Count is saying...

"One, two. Two orthodontists gold mines! Ah-ah-ah!"

Happy to Still Be Banging!

A while back, I predicted that if I got bangs cut in I would grow to hate them after two weeks. Then I took the plunge anyway.

I am pleased to report that it has now been well over two months, and bangs and I are still going strong!

If anyone wants to take us out for drinks or sushi to celebrate, let me know.

Tallman Pays Through the Nose

Several years ago, I went to a concert in Boston with my then-boyfriend. While there was a decent crowd at the venue, it was by no means packed. Had they wanted to, every person in attendance could have spaced themselves apart in such a way that they could swing their arms around all night without clobbering anyone in the face. This is what made the actions of the guy standing in front of me so unacceptable.

Aside from being annoyingly tall (couldn't he just crouch when in public or something?) Guy-in-front of me annoyed me by repeatedly backing into me. None of my initial, gentler, defense tactics worked. I tried taking a step back the first couple of times he bumped into me, but the guy just continued his backward onslaught.

More confrontational approaches failed as well. I tried saying, "Careful!" and "Watch it!" a few times; not only did the guy fail to both be careful and watch it, but he completely refused to acknowledge that I was there at all. I tried standing my ground, but that only resulted in me getting my nose crushed by the guy's shoulder blade.

That's when it occurred to me: if Guy-in-front-of-me couldn't feel an entire human body colliding with his back, then he probably wouldn't feel something as gentle as a light touch, right? I decided to test this theory. I picked my nose, and I wiped my finger on the back of his shirt.

No response.

I had found a covertly aggressive tactic that worked perfectly. It didn't stop the guy from backing into me, but it made me feel much better. I kept working at it for the rest of the concert. By the end of the night, Guy-in-front-of-me's shirt looked like a piece of modern art.

Gross? Yes. But gross is kind of what I do.

Three Narrow Escapes from Death's Watery/Ballsy/Fiery Grasp!

In the spring of 1989, my family went on a trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Based on some photographs that I found, it seems that my sister saved my life on at least three separate occasions during that vacation.

In this photo, Julie appears to be saving me from drowning in a swimming pool.

This picture was taken moments before Julie saved me from drowning in a ball pit.

At this go-kart track, I was menaced by Boy-in-blue-shirt. In case it's not quite clear how nervous I was, here's closer look:

"Mmmm... ehhhhh... oh dear..."

This photo was snapped just seconds before Julie ran that punk off the road.

Lazy Sunday Hasty Photo: Escape From Satan's Bunny

Trapped at the sacrificial altar of a giant, demonic rabbit, I realized that my only hope of escape was to gnaw through my father's arm.

I Don't Need Psychotherapy, I Need an Agent!

If I'm awake, you can safely assume that my inner dialogue is going at a faster and chattier pace than the super-speedy disclaimers at the end of radio ads. It's like a high school cafeteria up there in my head - a dissonant symphony of competing voices babbling silly nonsense, blown-up drama, petty gossip and sex jokes.

More than anything else, though, I have songs running through my mind. Sometimes I'm singing something catchy from the radio, sometimes I'm awkwardly trying to translate English lyrics into Spanish, sometimes I'm writing my own little ditties about life, love, the internet and video game characters.

I started writing songs when I was pretty young. My earliest recollection of a song I wrote was circa fourth grade. It was called, "Down Went Jenny." I remember very few of the lyrics, but there was a repeating chorus that went,

Down, down,
Down went Jenny, Jenny...

 The lyrics were set to an upbeat tune, and I choreographed some sort of bizarre 60's-era swim motions to perform while I sang. The song was about a girl (Jenny) who wandered into a lake and drowned.

I also remember that I ended the song by segueing into a commercial for an imaginary company.

So, kids, the moral of the story is:
Buy Harvey's Life Vests!

Good job, little Lola. Way to be a pioneer for the "creepy jingles" sector of the advertising industry.

How Drugs Ruined Summer Camp

When I was growing up I was generally naive about, well, everything. I remember looking at the anti-drug pamphlets they handed out during my sixth grade health class and being utterly confused. The pages of the pamphlets were littered with illustrations of people under the influence of alcohol and various illegal substances, people with spirals for eyes and shaky hands. The little informational handbooks neglected to mention that drugs and alcohol sometimes made people feel good before they turned their eyeballs into trippy corkscrews and set their hands a-trembling. According to these pamphlets, all drugs did was make people feel terrible and ruin their lives. Why would anyone want to do something like that, I wondered?

Boy, I thought, some people sure were dumb.

The following summer I attended a two week-long horseback riding camp. The oldest girl in my bunkhouse was inarguably the coolest, most badass girl at camp. She'd had boyfriends, she was obsessed with Kurt Cobain, and she wore her bangs long over her face so that they always hid one of her eyes. After lights-out every night she would lie in her top bunk and preach to us about music and sadness. She'd tell us about stupid girls that she'd made fun of from her school and explain to us why we should hate cheerleaders, grownups and Courtney Love.

One evening she was reciting from memory some of the choicest bits from her seventh grade yearbook profile. She wrapped up the tale with the quote she'd chosen to go beneath her picture: "If I were a mushroom I'd want to be laced, even though lace is too girly for me."

A-ha, I remember thinking, here's my chance. If I could say something funny and blasé, all the girls in the bunk would see that I was totally cool and world-weary too!

"Ugh, I think mushrooms are gross," I said, "My mom has them on her pizza all the time but they, like, seriously make me gag. Total yuck."

There was an awkward silence. Then Jaded-long-bangs called across the room to me, "I was talking about magic mushrooms, you retard."

The rest of the girls in the bunkhouse giggled. I was mortified.

For the rest of my two-week stay at camp, I blamed my humiliating mushroom faux pas for my official loser status. This was perhaps for the best, though, as it allowed me to remain ignorant of a number of other contributing factors. Example:

My favorite outfit while at riding camp:

Skintight beige stretch pants and a vest that portrayed scenes from a thrilling foxhunt!