John and I took a trip to MHA (my old boarding school) over Memorial Day weekend. We stayed at an adorable bed and breakfast in Jasper, reminding me how much nicer and cleaner B&B's are than mid-range hotels.
The campus is as beautiful and serene as ever. While the dormitory is now gone--MHA closed in 2000--most everything else there is still the same, aside from the old art department building, which now houses a charming little on-site brewery.
When we visited last summer, I noticed an abundance of painted rocks placed around the monastery grounds, so I thought I'd bring some of my own.
I painted a giraffe for Angela--she loved giraffes....
....and left it in the grotto...
Church bells signaling Saturday evening mass in downtown Ferdinand echo throughout the campus.
Poignant sign among the vigil lights.
I painted a few rocks bearing the old MHA logo....
(NOTE: the school was called Academy Immaculate Conception until the early '70s,
when they rebranded as Marian Heights Academy.)
Ancient yearbook pic for reference, with the old dorms in the background.
I left my heart in Ferdinand, Indiana....
...along with a few strawberries.
The final resting place for the sisters of the monastery.
We took a stroll over to the colonnades, and I posted up on the wall overlooking the nuns' cemetery and the town of Ferdinand. Not gonna lie, this exact spot where I'm perched right here? Probably one of my top three favorite locations on earth. As a student, it's where I used to steal away for some "me time" when I wanted to journal, think, or just be. Nearly 40 years later, the feels are the same.
Aerial photo of the campus, taken not by me.
Tuesday, May 03, 2022
RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY "Dare to Fall in Love"
A disclaimer: my inclusion of this entry in the RFO series does not constitute endorsement or approval, because, well...it's kind of shit.
In the midst of a recent insomnia-fueled Googling session, I was trying to find the name of a half-remembered song. I didn't even care for the song that much, but some of lyrics had become inexplicably lodged in my brain and that was enough to activate my OCD need for a definitive answer.
I'm a bit surprised that I was able to actually find the song, because the only lyrics I could recall went something like, "One kiss, it's a something something thing, I get what I deserve, if I something something thing." Well, it turns out the song is "Dare To Fall in Love" by someone called Brent Bourgeois, and it was released in 1990.
According to Wikipedia, the song was only a modest hit but it received a fair bit of play on VH-1 back in the day. This puzzled me, because I was 16-17 years old in 1990 and I sure as shit wasn't watching VH-1. That changed later on in the '90s when the former soft rock music channel started producing fun shows like Pop-Up Video and the insanely addictive Behind the Music series, but in 1990 I was still very much a devotee of MTV, grooving on 120 Minutes, Post Modern, and--embarrassingly enough--Totally Pauly. You see kids, in 1990 I thought Pauly Shore was funny and irreverent with his stoner patois and oddball antics; this was before I learned that his bohemian hippie shtick was merely a gimmick and he was actually a privileged Hollywood brat who lucked into a standup career by an accident of birth (his parents owned The Comedy Store). I also thought Totally Pauly (I didn't yet know him as Pauly Shore) was kind of hunky, a view that some of my high school friends also shared, just so you know I wasn't the only freak who lusted after the future star of Jury Duty.
Give me a break, I was young and naive. We all were.
Oh hell, since I'm in confessional mode and we're being real, I also thought Married With Children was funny and irreverent. Yeah I know, but hey, at least I can proudly say I never watched Saved By the Bell. In fact, I didn't know anyone my age who watched that fetid turd of a show. I suspect SBTB was the type of pop culture ephemera purportedly aimed at high schoolers but really only watched by middle schoolers, kind of like how 13-year-olds read Seventeen magazine while actual 17-year-olds were reading Cosmo.
True story: today whenever Saved By the Bell is mentioned as some sort
of beloved Gen X touchstone....I die a little inside.
Anyway, I don't know for sure where I heard this "Dare to Fall in Love" song, but I think I most likely encountered it through the piped-in music station at Milano's Pasta To Go, the Italian fast food joint in Broad Ripple where I began my illustrious, short-lived career in food service during the summer of 1990. The restaurant's sound system played a perpetual stream of the soulless adult contemporary dreck of the day; I swear I heard "Hold On" by Wilson Philips about 35 goddamned times during every one of my shifts. I still get PTSD flashbacks when I hear the opening chords of that syrupy song. There was also a shit ton of Gloria Estefan, Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera, Kenny G, and the like. It was hell. That's the reason I strongly suspect that this barely-one-hit wonder by Brett Bourgeois was foisted upon my tender psyche during the summer I was slinging pasta at Milano's and trying to remember why the hell I'd signed up for this shit.
Man I hated that job, but I guess that's sort of the point of having a fast food gig when you're a kid. It's important that you learn early how much working in fast food sucks so you can spend the rest of your life staying as far away from that career choice as you possibly can. To add insult to injury, I was the youngest employee there, so my dickhead manager Byron made me do like 90% of the grunt work. Whenever business was slow and Byron was around, I could be found mopping the floors, washing the windows, and (shudder) cleaning the toilets. I think since it was my first job, Byron felt the need to school me on having a strong work ethic. Either that, or he was just a prick. Probably a bit of both.
There were a few high points though. One time I was working a late night shift with a skeleton crew that consisted of myself, Carl (the cool manager), and Doug the kitchen guy, when Don Hein--the sports anchor from the Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR--rolled up in the drive-thru. I remember this mostly because he ordered manicotti and when he got to the window, Carl informed me that, oops, we were out of manicotti, and when I had to break the news to Don Hein he got really pissed off. I think Carl offered him some free breadsticks or something, trying to smooth things over. It didn't seem to work because ol' Don just heaved a loud sigh and said, "Oh for Christ sake, just forget it," then peeled out of the drive-thru in a huff. Carl and Doug and I sort of looked at each other and we were like, hey, wasn't that Don Hein? And then we laughed. You had to be there I guess, but trust me. It was funny.
Do not come between this dude and his manicotti. Seriously, just don't.
Then there was Mike, one of the cooks that I used to goof off with whenever we were left unsupervised. Mike was one of those hip hop loving white guys who sported an early '90s "fade" hairstyle with complicated designs shaved into the side of his head. To be fair, I'm pretty sure he was one of the few white dudes who came by his urban trappings honestly since he was an incoming senior at Broad Ripple High School (David Letterman's alma mater!), which, yeah, it was in Broad Ripple but was also an IPS school, thus a lot rougher than other northside schools. Mike and I had a bit of a flirtation going on, but he was really only interested in ladies of color so I don't think he ever took me seriously as potential girlfriend material. We had a lot of fun, though. We used to hang out in the kitchen where he would crank up WTLC (the local rap/R&B radio station), and he would always go nuts when they played Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison, one of the big tracks of the summer. Personally I couldn't stand that song, but I enjoyed watching Mike dance around the kitchen to it. He could bust a move and was really good at the sort of hip hop/club style of dancing that I now associate with Bobby Brown--lots of running in place and throwing of elbows and such.
BUT there did happen to be one hip hop tune that even I--the Depeche Mode-loving, 120 Minutes-watching, clove smoking fashion victim that I was--could not resist, and that song was Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance. I think Mike considered it a personal triumph when he got me to do The Humpty Hump with him, right there in the kitchen. (No, it wasn't a sex thing.)
"This is my dance y'all, Humpty Hump's my name!"
Then there were the various "older" (twentysomething) guys that came in on the weekends to line their stomachs with pasta and other carbs before a heavy night of barhopping in Broad Ripple. Yes, sometimes they were cute, and sure, oftentimes they didn't care how underage I looked, and of course, I'd be lying if I said my dumb ass wasn't flattered by their inappropriate attentions. Whenever they asked me where I went to high school, I'd dodge the question by saying, "I go to school in southern Indiana, I'm just here for the summer." (Which was TRUE! You couldn't say that wasn't true, dammit.) And they'd be like, "So you're in college? Where?" And I'd say "I go to a private school down near Evansville. Marian Heights? Yeah, it's really small, you probably haven't heard of it." And with no way to verify what the hell or where the hell Marian Heights was (ah, the joys of the pre-internet age!), they bought into my bullshit. Not that I ever benefited from this in any real way, but standing behind the cash register in my hideously dorky Milano's uniform, a bit of ego-fluffing now and then certainly didn't go amiss. What can I say? I was every inch the Stacy character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
"You look like you could still be in high school."
"Ha. Yeah, everybody says that."
Unlike Stacy, however, I didn't have a Linda to fall back on. I was sadly Linda-less. That really sucked for me, because if ever there was an unsophisticated 16-year-old need of a hip, worldly-wise older girl to shepherd me through what would be an increasingly difficult year in my teenage existence, it was my awkward self.
I did have a Gretchen, however, but she wasn't much help. Although she was friendly enough, my fellow cashier Gretchen was one of those girls who was convinced that any and every male who came within a one-mile radius must be madly in lust with her. I mean, Gretchen was girl-next-door cute in a preppy sort of way, but she wasn't exactly the teenage temptress she fancied herself to be. For instance, like some dude would wander up to the counter to ask for extra packets of parmesan cheese, and as soon as he was gone she'd be all, "Oh my God, did you see that? He was totally hitting on me! You mean you didn't notice? God he's being sooooo obvious, it's really annoying." She pretty much swore that every single male employee at Milano's, even sweet, laid-back, grandfatherly Carl (the aforementioned cool manager), was hopelessly obsessed with her. I didn't see it, but whatever. I wasn't going to be the one to burst her bubble.
I do remember a funny incident where Byron (the dickhead manager) called Gretchen, Mike, and me into his office for a Serious Talk. Apparently it had come to Byron's attention that certain members of "the team" were utilizing the Milano's store phone for personal calls, thus wasting the company's timewhile they were (GASP!) on the clock! (Yes, that's exactly how Byron spoke: he was your garden variety, cartoonishly sincere, middle management hack.) Anyway, Gretchen immediately piped up and was like, "Yeah, that was probably me. See, my dad called me here at work because he heard a rumor that I'm dating this older guy, and he's trying to keep tabs on me, and yada, yada, yada," and just gabbled on and on for like five minutes as Byron's eyes glazed over, and Mike bit his lip to keep from laughing, and my brain floated off somewhere into the stratosphere. Finally Byron--pissed off that his big Teachable Moment had been hijacked by Gretchen's inane prattle--just cut her off mid-sentence and he's like, "Right. Bottom line, no personal phone calls on the clock. Got it? Good. Back to work."
Besides Gretchen, there were a few other cashiers I worked with. One was Maggie, a pretty blonde Butler student. I was usually paired with Maggie on weekdays, and we would often reward ourselves for surviving the lunch rush by splitting an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. Milano's was the first place I'd ever encountered mozzarella sticks and I thought they were the greatest culinary invention ever. I mean, cheese--fried AND battered? Yes please! I never got to know Maggie all that well but I thought she was cool, although I remember Mike having some vague reason for not liking her. I think he claimed she was stuck up or something. Whatever. She shared her mozzarella sticks with me. She was a good egg.
Then there was a girl called Christy. She was hired a few weeks after I was, so she was the "new girl" for a while. She was quiet and a bit awkward, but nice enough. I remember us bonding over our shared dislike of Madonna's "Vogue," another song that was everywhere that summer. We both agreed that it was dumb and annoying. (I was a fan of Madonna's first three albums, but by 1990 she'd started in on that "I'm a serious artiste" bullshit, and I was over it.) Then one evening, I arrived to work the dinner shift to find that Christy had just up and quit earlier that day. Apparently, she had refused to wear the sandwich board.
For the uninitiated, this is an example of a sandwich board:
Of course, the purpose of the Milano's sandwich board was not to broadcast the wearer's desire to discuss male genitalia; it was meant to advertise the restaurant. The sandwich board was Byron's bright idea, of course, and he made it mandatory for every single one of us (excluding the managers) to do the sandwich board walk of shame up and down Broad Ripple Avenue. We all thought it was lame, but I didn't mind it too much because it was at least a chance to get outside and away from the store for a bit. I mean, I felt like a complete dork walking around wearing the stupid sign, but I considered it a small price to pay in exchange for an hour of freedom while still on the clock.
My coworker Christy, however, was not so chill about it. When she arrived at work that day to find it was her turn to do the sandwich board shuffle, she put her foot down and said no. Byron informed her that she could either comply or hang up her Milano's apron forever. Christy chose the latter. I remember Mike being livid--absolutely livid--about the whole situation. He was like--what--did this bitch think she was too good for sandwich board duty? I didn't get why he was so bothered about it. Actually, I was inclined to side with Christy. I mean, fuck Byron, and fuck his stupid sandwich board. Damn the man, fight the power, and all that jazz. Good for you, Christy. I hope you're still raging against the machine, wherever you are.
Speaking of The Man, I got called on the carpet myself that summer for inadvertently charging an expired credit card. You see kids, back in the day when a customer wanted to pay with a card, we had to take the card and run it through this contraption that Google tells me is a "manual imprint." It was a pain in the ass, is what it was.
I should mention that credit card transactions were extremely rare, since 99% of our customers paid with cash, as was the norm; Milano's was considered ahead of its time since we were one of the few fast food restaurants that even accepted credit cards back then. It was so long ago that once in a while I'd even get people asking if we accepted personal checks as payment, and I was supposed to say brightly, "I'm sorry, we no longer take checks, but we do accept Visa and Mastercard."
When we did get a customer paying with credit, we had to ask for a driver's license to check that the name on the card matched up with the ID, and--most importantly--we had to verify the credit card's expiration date. Guess what I forgot to do late one night when some jackass handed me a card that had (apparently) expired the month before? Yep.
Dude, Byron was pissed. When my oversight was discovered a few days later, he made a big production out of calling me into his office to show me a photocopy of the credit card imprint and asking if I saw anything wrong with it. (Can I just say that condescending bosses who treat their employees like they're first graders should be shot out of a cannon and into the sun?) I looked over the paper, and finally I was like, "Okay, I see it. The card was expired." Byron was like, "Yes, very good! Congratulations, you got yourself a written warning." (Oh, the bastard was loving this.) So he pulled out this official looking sheet of paper that basically stated that I'd fucked up, that it had been brought to my attention that I'd fucked up, that I understood the extent to which I'd fucked up, and would I please sign on the dotted line below to acknowledge that I'd fucked up? It probably also said I was a lawless degenerate who shouldn't be allowed to breed or vote. I don't know, I didn't really read it. I just signed the damn thing and got the hell out of there.
I think Byron was expecting a bigger reaction, probably hoping that I'd burst into tears and grovel at his feet for forgiveness or something, but really I couldn't be arsed. Mostly because it was the beginning of August, I'd given my two weeks notice the previous week, and I had like four more shifts left before I said arrivederci to Byron and Milano's.
At the end of my afternoon shift on the last day of work, I hugged Mike and Gretchen, promising to visit whenever I was back in town on school breaks (which I actually did a few times), then clocked out and quickly scooted my ass out the door in order to avoid bidding Byron a final farewell. It was real, it was fun, but it hadn't been real fun. As I said earlier, it was a summer job. You weren't really supposed to like it.
As for Milano's, I'm sad to say that the restaurant folded around 1993 or so--about the time Fazoli's opened up a bunch of Indianapolis locations and swallowed up Milano's customer base.
Fuck off, Fazoli's. Your spaghetti sucks.
The building (strip mall, actually) that housed Milano's is still standing, and although 1035 Broad Ripple Avenue has been home to various small businesses over the last few decades, it's now a Mexican cafe called Biscuits. I've never been there, but my sister tells me they serve a really good brunch. Looking at their Yelp page, it's changed a lot on the inside. The biggest difference (besides the Mexican-inspired decor) is that they've rearranged things to a diner-like setup where the kitchen is front and center and you can see the food being cooked right there, whereas with Milano's, the kitchen was hidden in the back where the cooks could goof off 80% of the time and the cashiers like me were at the counter on the frontlines.
But I am happy to report that the storefront proudly sports
the same green awnings from the Milano's era.
Oh hell, now see what I did? I got all carried away talking about my teenage years and summer jobs and fast food pasta joints that I completely forgot the reason I started writing this post in the first place.
Anyway, yeah, Brent Bourgeois and "Dare To Fall in Love." There's not a lot to say about the song, it's just your typical soft-rock yuppie ballad. The video is nothing to write home about either; just some arty shots of bored-looking models floating around a hotel room while Bourgeois (apparently that's his real name) lounges around lip syncing moodily. One notable aspect is Brent's hair, which manages to combine two of the worst early '90s hairstyle trends: long, thin, 90210-inspired sideburns and a greasy, over-gelled mullet.
According to his Wikipedia page he now records Christian music, which I can totally see because he looks a lot like the lead singer from Creed.
Damn, I mean....he really looks like the guy from Creed. WOW. Are we sure he's not Scott Stapp's dad? (Apparently he's not, but holy shit, the resemblance is spooky!)
Thursday, October 22, 2020
"That you are here, that life exists....that the powerful play
goes on and you may contribute a verse."
Well it seems 2020 has turned me into one of those weepy middle-aged fraus who are perpetually hand-wringing over relatives and friends who are sick, dying, or deceased, but in the words of Hard Harry, SO BE IT.
Two days ago I got word that Mr. Duane Verkamp--my favorite teacher from my beloved alma mater Marian Heights Academy--recently passed away from pneumonia. Fuck this fucking year.
Me with Mr. Verkamp and his wife Maureen
at MHA Alumni Weekend, summer 2000.
In truth, Mr. Verkamp was so much more than just my favorite teacher, but it's near impossible to explain what that means to anyone who didn't know him. The only way to sort of explain it--to people from my generation, anyway--is to picture Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, but like a mellow hippie Boomer version. And instead of a New England boys' prep school in the 1950s, the setting was an all-girls Catholic boarding school in rural Indiana in the late 1980s - early 1990s. (Also, we weren't sneaking into the woods at midnight to read poetry to each other; we were sneaking into the woods to smoke and/or make out with our townie boyfriends. But that's another story.)
A few photos from my high school yearbook, 1990-91 (junior year)
Jeez, could they have made the faculty photos
look any more like mug shots?
In addition to teaching English, Mr. V was also my forensics coach.
(Forensics club was what most other high schools called debate team.)
And then there's me at 17.
I was a naughty Catholic schoolgirl before it was cool.
There's really not much I am able to put into words at the moment; grief has made me its bitch. All I can say is that an amazing human being is gone and I'm heartbroken and I didn't picture it happening this way. In the words of that song, I always thought that I'd see him again.
I think I've earned the right to post this:
Monday, July 27, 2020
RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
"And I don't know which end to burn..."
I won't comment on any real world shit going on, because fuck it. We all know 2020 sucks. We all know everything sucks.
So take a break from the bullshit and escape with me to 1985, a comparatively innocent, COVID-free time when Julian Lennon's debut album Valotte was riding high on the music charts in the US and UK and the first two singles, the title track and Too Late For Goodbyes, were in heavy rotation on MTV with videos directed by.....Sam Peckinpah. (Seriously!)
But the Julian Lennon track I'm most fond of is the less remembered and woefully underrated third single, "Say You're Wrong." It's not groundbreaking or anything, but it's a fun little song and video (this one directed by Tim Pope). The thing I love about this tune is that while Julian's vocals are of course very reminiscent of his father's, the song's melody is quite McCartney-esque, an observation duly noted by someone in the YouTube comments. Incidentally, another commentator remarked on Julian's "nice figure," like he's a contestant in a Star Search spokesmodel competition (hee!), but I kinda know what they mean. Julian is adorable in this and I'm digging the '80s northern English vibe with the hat, boots, and long black coat. What can I say? It's definitely working for him.
Aw hell, let's just stay in the mid-80s. Pretend like 2020 never happened. Sound good? Cool.
Here's "Valotte," my second fave and also a damn fine song.
And also, there's this:
Smash Hits could always be counted on to stick John Taylor on the cover.
