Ann Marie and I became pretty much instant-friends in 1993, and within, oh, one or two weeks, complete lunacy took over our lives. We would sit in her car talking about the Anne of Green Gables books – she was the only person I knew who was AS conversant in the entire series as myself. Infamous moment – we were talking about Anne of Windy Poplars, and we were remembering the little boy Anne befriends, the one who lives in a shack in the woods with his stern scary father. I am now not remembering which of us said the following line, so Ann, remind me – but anyway, the two of us sat in her car talking about the little boy – and one of us said, “I can’t remember his name – what was his name?” And the other one of us said, “I know his dog’s name was Carlo.”
I AM DYING.
We were HOWLING with laughter and we STILL say that line. “I know his dog’s name was Carlo.”
Instant friends from that point on.
Another moment from that same conversation, still talking about Anne of Windy Poplars (and again, this was early in our friendship – maybe a week in!) – and we were talking about the school play that Anne gets involved in, and all of the family psychodramas that come up, with the Pringle family – and Ann Marie worked herself up into a frenzy just thinking about it. And here is how that part of the conversation went:
Ann (all angry and emphatic): “And let me tell you, Miss Jen Pringle, with the cool green eyes – that you cannot and WILL not steal the spotlight from I’m sorry but I cannot remember the other girl’s name –”
Me: (interrupting flatly) “Sophy Sinclair.”
Again: DYING.
It was as though we had met a longlost friend from childhood. Yes, we should have been friends when we were 8, but we weren’t, so we immediately began to make up for lost time.
The adventures we have had have been without number.
Once we drove by a guy’s apartment and stopped on the street to stare at it. This was not just a guy I was interested in, or stalking in a mild manner. This was a guy I had been involved with for a year at that point. I had basically seen him the day before. I have no idea what prompted us to go sit and stare at his apartment, but anyway, we were very nervous that he would basically walk down the street, and totally bust us, freakin’ sitting in a parked car staring up at his window … and there was a hilarity in both of us about that. The light was on in his front room. Ann said (and she was dead serious): “See, that looks like that light was left on when he went to bed, he forgot to turn it off.”
How can you tell that from just looking at the lamp through the window??? We still laugh about that, it’s actually a beautiful (and nuts) symbol of a good friendship. “Look, I know it’s insane, but I am still willing to analyze the quality of the light through a window, if you need me to do that.”
We performed at Milwaukee Summer Fest together (you know: “Give names. Check in.“) For four days, we were treated like mega-stars. I’m not sure, but I think it might be the most fun I have ever had.
Here we are, with Pat, our “give names, check in” friend (and, briefly), employer. Huh. That’s weird. That’s our BOSS in the photo booth with us. Yet neither of us seem to feel the need to put in an urgent call to HR complaining of a hostile workplace. Mainly because there is no HR. Also, we’re both laughing. Anyway.
Give names. Check in. That’s all you have to do.
We were extras in a series of Huey Lewis videos, based on the old American Bandstand show, with scaffolds surrounding the stage, covered in people, dancing, hanging out, etc. Huey Lewis and his band played live for, oh, about six hours. It was incredible. When they would mess up a lyric, we’d have to start over. It felt like the entire rockabilly community of Chicago and Milwaukee was there, gyrating around on scaffolds, wearing their own glasses and wardrobe, because, you know, none of us dressed like we were in the contemporary world, anyway. Yes, my hair was pouffed up into this huge bouffant thing, but I could wear my own glasses for the shoot, since, uhm, they were prescription, they were mine, but they were also so retro that I looked like I had stepped out of an actual American Bandstand broadcast, just by standing there) – and we danced around on scaffolds as Huey Lewis played – LIVE – below. Again: so much fun.
It was one of those spontaneous events, too, where you had no time to plan, you just had to say Yes. Ann Marie heard the call go out on the radio that morning – “Extras wanted for day-long Huey Lewis shoot” – and called me immediately, freaking out. Huey Lewis was my first concert, don’t you know, and Ann Marie loved him too. “Sheila, we have to go – they just want us to show up at the radio station in early 60s clothes.” “YES. LET’S GO RIGHT NOW.”
She came to pick me up within 20 minutes and we were off to the radio station. It was great because it was impulsive and we both just “propelled ourselves into the blazing star” of the experience.
We have been friends for years, and she is tremendously dear to me. A truly wonderful woman, humorous, giving, smart … and she’s there for you when you need her.
Below are some of my favorite “Diary Friday” entries about Ann Marie – including an experience that ranks as my favorite random experience of ALL. TIME. Stuff like that happens when we’re together, and the beauty of it is: she’s the kind of friend who really GETS the beauty of such moments, too.
Happy birthday, dear friend. Thank you for all the times you have “propelled yourself into the blazing star” with me. You’re the best.
Look, I know his dog’s name was Carlo, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.
November
I remember events by my outfits. That night, at Pat, was a blue denim and black mini-skirt kind of night. I had a feeling re: M.; by this point I totally believed he would be there. I sat for the first set with Ann and she came back after going to the bathroom (“doing a sweep” for M.) and said, “Let your heart SING!”
I went back to sit with him. I felt like I was shooting out light from beneath my skin. I was so happy!
Pat had me sing with him. The intro to that song pulls my heart up and out of my body. He makes me feel like I could fly. If only I could run fast enough.
After the show, everyone was heading to the Emerald Queen, all of us exiting together. Pat was leaving too. I made M do the velociraptor for Pat.
M. did NOT want to do his velociraptor for Pat, and I made him. Afterwards, M. was just wincing about it. “Pat McCurdy was having none of my velociraptor.”
We all had this HYSTERICAL walk over to the Emerald Queen. M and I, our arms around each other, were lurching across Lincoln Avenue. It was 1:30 in the morning, and a huge crowd of us had been set loose. Gus Kapinsky was leapfrogging over parking meters, one after the other after the other. We made M. watch him do this.
Still stuck on Pat’s clear animosity towards him, and Pat’s indifference to his velociraptor, M. stood on the curb and pretended he was about to leap off and commit suicide. “I’m gonna jump!” he screamed.
No cars in sight. Long empty black street. Street lights changing from green to yellow to red with no cars there.
Suddenly M. announced bluntly, “A velociraptor can go 75-80 miles an hour” and he took off. Other Lounge Ax people heading to the Emerald Queen, some in 2s, others in larger groups, saw him gallop by, and started laughing, pointing. “Look! It’s Dinosaur Boy!”
Voices echoing. Cold.
M. was a velociraptor. He peered hungrily into the windows of a car pulling out of a lot.
I was laughing so hard I thought I might need medical attention.
M. said to me after, “When I move my body – people laugh.”
Thinking of the velociraptor, the spontaneous jazz dances, the circus horses, the ostrich running through my apartment, I had to agree.
At one point, at the Emerald Queen, some Sinatra song came on and M. suddenly leapt up and made a spectacle of himself with an impromptu jazz dance. A crowd surrounded him, roaring with laughter. Ann and I were mopping off tears. There were actual people watching, but M. was performing for an imaginary crowd, which was my favorite part. Also, he and I had literally been in the middle of a conversation, there hadn’t even been a lull, and he responded, mid-sentence, to the call of the music.
M. turned to me suddenly, later, and said, “You wanna see my circus horse?”
You really have to ask?
The place was packed with people and suddenly M. pranced through the crowd, and all I can say is he WAS a circus horse down to the expression in his damn eyeballs.
I heard people murmuring, “What’s going on” as M. high-stepped around me. He became himself for a second to explain to me what he did physically to become a horse (he had a theory about it) and then he became a horse again.
Ann turned around in the middle of all this and saw him high-stepping by. She watched him for a moment and then slowly looked to me for an explanation. Her expression was priceless.
I said quietly, “He’s a circus horse.”
She nodded, accepting this. “Oh.”
M. said to me, word for word, “You and me – we laugh. We hang out with each other and we laugh. Know what I mean? It makes me happy. I like laughing with you. For too long I’ve lived my life like that Pat song about being artistic. I don’t want to do that anymore. I like being happy.”
And then – 2 weeks later – came my birthday extravaganza, held during a Pat show at Lounge Ax.
Ann Marie basically decorated the bar. She is so incredible. There was a huge bunch of balloons (“Here. Arrange these in a festive manner,” she ordered Lady Elaine).
(Ed: This is so hostile but there was another Pat fan whom she and I did not like, who was a bit crazy, and obsessed with McCurdy in a kind of stalkerish way – not in the ultra COOL and sophisticated way that ANN and I were obsessed with Pat McCurdy- and basically this stalker-fan’s nose and his chin almost touched – so Ann Marie and I called him “Lady Elaine” after the puppet on Mr. Rogers, because we felt there was a resemblance. We did not call him “Lady Elaine” to his face, but we would blatantly refer to him as such, “Wow, look at how Lady Elaine is hovering around Pat…” “Loved Lady Elaine’s crazy air guitar during ‘Knock Things Over'” So the image of Ann Marie ordering “Lady Elaine” to arrange balloons in a “festive manner” … It’s STILL funny to me, Ann bossing Lady Elaine around)
Ann Marie baked cupcakes, brought candy. It was a total extravaganza. Everyone knew it was my birthday. I wore my mermaid dress and a black choker. (Ed: How embarrassing – but I warned you up front! Every diary entry during the “magic time” is accompanied by a description of my clothes)
I went to find M. and he was sitting at the bar, so cute, waiting for me. I was so happy to see him I was high on him. We were a happy couple. We are a happy couple.
I pointed to all the balloons, arranged by Lady Elaine. “Those are for me.”
He asked me how my actual birthday was and I told him pretty bad and that I had cried on the train. He was hurt by this news. “You cried on your birthday?”
Then he said, “I thought about you on your birthday. I thought about calling you, but …” and he stopped himself with this very inward-look on his face. He had no word of excuse, he looked confused at his own behavior. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
I said, “You should have! Of course, at the first sound of your voice I would have dissolved into tears.”
We laughed at that.
I asked him how his Thanksgiving was and he said, “It was all right,” but with such an evident edgy look of misery and anxiety in his eyes. He cannot mask his emotions. I responded to the look on his face, not his words. “Not good, huh.”
He shrugged and then said, “Well – clearly I have issues.”
I couldn’t help myself. I burst into laughter right in his face. He has assimilated me! Me, always talking about “issues”. He looked truly confused, like, “What did I just say?” – and I kept laughing, and then he began YELLING at me, “No! No! I don’t have issues. I have PROBLEMS. I don’t have issues. I have PROBLEMS.”
Ann Marie wrote me a fairy story for my birthday. I was living in such a euphoric state. Everything was perfect. Ann also gave me flannel sheets! Bless you, Ann!! I love them. She went totally nuts for my birthday. She is an incredible party planner.
I had raved to M. about how I wanted flannel sheets, and he told me I had to get some. So I showed them to him, all excited. “Look, M.! Flannel sheets!” He was cute – kind of withdrawn, but smiling, shy, kind. “Hey! You just told me you wanted some!”
Half of our conversations are about objects and their faults or virtues: bureaus, incense, coffee makers, coffee tables, banana pickers jackets, new blue jeans, veal parmesan sandwiches, his special mattress he had as a teenager, etc.
I loved it that M. would get all puffed up like a peacock because he was “the guy with Sheila”. He would pretend there was an imaginary crowd around him and he’d say in a very over-it casual tone, “Yeah – I’m with her. It’s no big deal. I’m just with her.”
M. told me his mother said his haircut made him look like a “jackass”.
We left the bar with a huge fanfare because of all my gifts and balloons.
Pat had had me sing, and had also led the entire place in singing happy birthday to me.
M. helped me carry some of my stuff out. Ann said he was behaving “very husbandly” which is so true. He was loaded down with all my gifts, and I was keeping him waiting as I said good-bye to everyone five times. He was grumbling about it, and impatient.
“I have to say good-bye to Ann Marie!”
“Didn’t you already do that?”
“Yeah, but not for the last time!”
He sat in the car, exhaling frustration as I flew around hugging everyone and saying goodbye to Ann Marie 10 times.
We released all of my balloons into the air outside of Lounge Ax. They floated up over the Biograph and disappeared into the black.
I climbed into the car with M., this person I have known for almost 2 years now, and we peeled away from the curb.
November
Ann Marie and I had an adventure. Casey (one of Ann’s friends from work) won a party at the Beaumont. Ann was invited and so was I, by association. We both felt out of it but we decided to go.
There was a major snowfall. We drove around looking for parking for 45 MINUTES.
The bar was jam-packed for the first Bulls game. Everyone was shrieking, “4-PEAT! 4-PEAT!” People, it’s the first game! Stop re-hashing the future! Can you let the season happen, please?
Ann’s British friend Trevor stood at the bar, the whole place erupting into insanity over some play or other, and Trevor yelled at the top of his lungs in his British accent, “GOD BLESS AMERICA!” This made Ann and I laugh very hard.
Ann Marie and I were so into each other that we found it difficult to be social with others. We were pretending to be gorillas, picking bugs off of each other and then eating them. We began discussing patty cake games, and of course we had to try them out and see what we remembered.
And that was that. We patty caked FOREVER. Ann Marie literally had bruises on her hands the next day.
We lost the words in the middle of Miss Mary Mack – at the same time – a big blank overcame the both of us at the same time. But we got Coke and a Smile down to perfection. We couldn’t stop. People kept craning their necks over to look, because it sounded like some kind of fight was going on with all that slapping.
Ann Marie said, totally business-like, “I’ll call my sister tonight for those Miss Mary Mack words.” Then she had to stop herself and say, “Ann Marie, what are you talking about?”
Finally we left, having made a spectacle of ourselves as always.
Big beautiful snowstorm.
Then came a once-in-a-lifetime event:
There was a bouncer at the door. Very chunky, no neck, flat top, He-Man Action Figure. He spoke to us and Ann and I were both immediately aloof.
“Hey, what was that hand thing you girls was doin’?”
Hand thing? Believe it or not, we didn’t know what he was talking about. We looked at each other, confused, and he went on, imitating our patty-caking, “You know!”
Light dawned on us. “Oh! That!”
Ann confessed to this person, this stranger, “We can’t remember the words to Miss Mary Mack though.”
He said, “I do!”
So … he sang the words for us (with gusto too) and Ann and I patty-caked to his accompaniment. We made him do it 6 times.
It was so wonderful, so hilarious, so joyful: the snow coming down, our hands stinging, tears of laughter in our eyes, patty-caking on the sidewalk with his tough-guy voice singing:
“Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack
All dressed in black black black
With silver buttons buttons buttons
All down her back back back”
He kind of bounced up and down as he sang, too. I will never forget it! Totally classic!
“I hate to ask you this,” Ann or I would say to him, breathless, “but could you do that one more time?”
All of his friends walked by during this insane time, and made fun of him mercilessly, but we couldn’t stop. I felt that if we didn’t keep going the spell would be broken, and Ann and I would be dressed in rags, and the bouncer would turn into a pumpkin or a mouse.
Finally we left, calling good-bye to our momentary soulmate joyously. It made us both so HIGH. We raved about it the whole way home.
And Jim arrived from London yesterday. He’s staying with me and Mitchell.
Ann, Mitchell and I dragged Jim and his jet lag along to go see Pat. Ann and I are getting so juvenile and it’s got to stop. We decided to “go glam”, so she came over to primp with me. She had on this navy blue flowing thing with brass buttons (just like my eggplant flowing thing). I had on this long green blazer and flowing pants.
We were scurrying about like lunatics.
Jim and Mitchell were down the hall in Mitchell’s room talking, but also listening to our girly blither from the bathroom. Mitchell informed Jim bluntly, “They’re 7.”
And at that moment, as if on cue, came the sounds of Miss Mary Mack from the living room.
JAN TO MARCH, FRAGMENTS
Joe: “Member in Pulp Fiction –”
Ann: “No, see now, that was Sheila.”
Ann: “Is that the one where your hair is different?”
Me: “No, that’s your fantasy.”
Me: “I’m just gonna be myself–”
Ann: “I think you should. Of course, if you need to be married …”
Me: “I think M. knew he could show up and I would let him know I wanted him to be there –”
Ann: “Or you’d blatantly ignore him like that night at the Wrigleyside.”
Fragments from M.’s improv show
“Thank you, Gore Vidal.”
“Gash – Like a Wound – is offended.”
“I wish I was a deformed midget.
Mitchell: “Something has happened that I keep forgetting.”
Me: “Isn’t it great that M. is back in my life?”
Ann: “I think it’s totally great, even though you know this is only going to lead to haikus and humidifiers.”
Snippets from M.’s improv show
“I usually save an extra seat for the Narrator.”
Roy, the Idiot Man-Child from the Service Station
“You’re not even a zoologist!”
“Of course, we need to park on a street where there is a raging fire.” – Me and Ann
Fragments – from M.’s improv show
“Leave some room, John!”
“I like working with pigs!”
“You’re gonna have to wear an eyepatch!”
“Well, that will make you more three-dimensional.” – Me (weaving a web of lies with Ann Marie)
“You sent the man 30 haikus. I don’t think he’ll mind if you come to a couple of his shows.” – Ann
Me to M.: “I have a kinder-whore appeal … or at least so I’ve been told.”
Joey, talking to the television, as we watched 30something: “These are nice people, Susannah. They want to like you because they love Garry.”
From the party 12/10/94
“These Oreos are insanely delicious.” – Joey
“You just never know what will happen with broccoli.” – Me
“I just kicked a pig.” – Ann
Heard simultaneously by Ann:
Me: (with a mouth full of food) “I have an eating disorder.”
Mitchell: “I can honestly say I’ve never slept with —– oh, wait — yes, I have.”
George and Ann, providing dialogue to an old movie, with the sound turned down:
George: “That’s why your dancing frustrates me – because I can’t move!”
Ann: “Well, don’t you think I understand that? I mean, look at my eyebrows!”
Me to M. (and I was dead serious): “It would totally not surprise me if I disappeared into a white slavery sex ring at some point.”
Me to Mitchell (about M.): “Isn’t he so sweet?”
Mitchell: “He is. He is sweet.” Long pause. “He’s a lunatic.”
Mitchell: “The improv jam is pushing all my buttons.”
Mitchell to me: “If you say ‘improv jam’ one more time, I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs.”
Ann: “I was thinking about your life the other day …”
Thank you SO much for the happy birthday wishes! I just sat here and laughed at all the great quotes and stories. I think *I* remembered his dog’s name, but you were the one that would remember the actual CHAPTER names in the book. Didn’t the father call him Little Fellow or something?
Oh God, I just googled “Anne of Green Gables”, dog, Carlo and YOUR site comes up first. You recalled a couple of years ago that the boy’s name was Teddy. I love that your site is first for this little bit of trivia.
Had a great birthday surrounded by my family, including the cutest 18-month old boy who sings his own songs and those on the iPod and drums all day long.
Thank you again for the wonderful birthday post for me!
Ann Marie’s dimples ALONE make me want to be her friend!