Los Hombres

These, here, are Los Hombres. The men. (And me. Can you guess which one I am?) JT used to be just un chico, but he turned 21 a month ago--so, Hombre. T has the beard, just to let the world know that he's total Hombre. And then, my dad. The original Hombre.

Today is Father's Day, so I felt like looking for a picture of me and my Dad, and then my two brothers came with it. No matter--they're my dad's kids too--so far as we know! Wink, wink. -Also, they'll be dads someday (in the distant, distant, DISTANT future), and they'll be super good at it. They're muy chulo.

(In LA, you see a lot more Spanish, so I'm practicing bilingualism, which I really believe in.)

Do you think we look alike? I hope so. I think the Hombres son guapos.

(I also think this bilingual slog is starting to read like an episode of Dora the Explorer.)

Here are some things about my dad:

1. He can play music by ear. I still don't understand how that works. He hears music, then he sits down, and he can play it. Like a genius music freak: Mozart, Yo-Yo Ma, My Dad.

2. He used to make his kids a dessert of milk, bananas and brown sugar. Now it doesn't sound all that appealing, but at the time: Nectar of the Gods.

3. When I was younger, sometimes he took me camping (never far from a clean, flushing toilet), and sometimes he had to take me to fancy-shmancy father-daughter dinner dances. He did both, without complaining.

4. Once, I tried to say that I liked spending time at home (because I did like spending time at home--I love it), so I said, "I guess I'm just really homely." My dad shouted, "What did you say?? You're not homely! You're beautiful!!!" I said, "I just meant I like being at home." And he said, "Oh. You mean homey." The point is: Dad is a slang term for "booster of self-esteem."

5. I am not sure if this actually happened or not, and I keep forgetting to ask my dad, but I have a very vivid, clear memory of being at the beach as a really young kid. I was wandering in the surf, when a wave crept up and swept me off my feet. I remember floating on my back, and seeing the expanse of gray sky, and feeling myself moving with the waves away from the beach. I didn't even have time to freak out. Then, my dad's head loomed into my field of vision, and he grabbed me out of the water. And I was like, "Yeah, I knew he'd come for me."

It doesn't really matter if that memory is factually true, because emotionally, it totally is.

Happy Father's Day!!

Oh, Canada Part 2 (Part Deux, for those French Canadiens out there).

People:

Mon Dieu! What the what? It turns out that I may actually BE a Canadian citizen. Really? I don't know. There's all sorts of complexities and intricacies and nuances to determining citizenship. But people have been whispering that maybe I am, in fact, Canadian! I've got two Canadian grandparents, who had a daughter while living in Massachusetts: she's a Canadian citizen, but born in the US, ergo, also American. Then, she marries some American (lame) (just kidding) in Portland, and gives birth to a dark-haired daughter at a Portland hospital in 1982. Is that daughter a dual citizen? A part-time Canuck?

Who am I? Where do I come from? As a child, when I memorized the song "Fifty Nifty United States," should I also have memorized "Thirteen Nifty Canadian Territories and Provinces"? What are the provinces? Manitoba. That's one. Quebec. That's another. Prince Edward Island. British Columbia. Instead of having my bedroom in college bedecked floor-to-ceiling in American flags (anyone remember that masterpiece?) should it have been covered instead with maple leafs and hockey pucks? Saskatchewan! That's another province.

This possibility of citizenship is blowing my mind, obviously. I need to focus my energies on something less baffling. And we might as well just pick up where we left off, because some astute readers, and my own brains, have come up with a few more absolutely essential Gifts-From-Canada.

11. Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch in real-life). All I can say is that I'm sorry for leaving this one off the list. I hope you can forgive me, but mostly, I hope Riggs can forgive me. Go Panthers! Texas forever.

12. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties). Which, apparently, inspired a TV show called Due South. Which, apparently, features someone named Paul Gross, who is NOT gross. Apparently, I'm going to need to do a little more research.

13. Friends. Reader SB is Canadian, and I had no idea! Also, my friend Lib is a gift from Canada on account of her father being Canadian, which I knew but also forgot. (Lib, are you a Canadian citizen? Should we take a voyage to the Motherland together?)

14. Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables (which is so good), and EMILY OF NEW MOON (which is brilliant and melancholy and changed my life for-e-ver).

15-28. All these celebs: Jim Carrey, Ellen Page, Nelly Furtado, Celine Dion, Mike Meyers, Michael J. Fox, Jay Manuel (from ANTM), Sarah McLachlan, Eric McCormack, Kim Cattrall, Neil Young, Feist, and Ryan Gosling.

29. Bilingual peanut butter. One thing I remember very clearly from visiting my grandparents in British Columbia is the fact that their peanut butter (Adams), already very different from the Skippy on which I was raised, was made all the more exotic by the French writing on the label. I remember eating breakfast with my grandfather, looking at the French words on that peanut butter label (cremeux, non sale), and thinking, "Wow. I'm really in a foreign country."

30. Roots poster, featuring one Matt Damon. (Really sorry I don't have a visual on this one.) Two blog VIPs reminded me that I'd left this off the list. When I was sixteen, I went to Canada, as per usual. My mother and I hit up a shopping mall, where there was a store called Roots (all the Olympic gear you've seen this year is made by Roots). I probably would not have gone in--it was too sporty--except that there was a huge, smiley poster of Matt Damon, wearing a Roots sweatshirt, shining down on me from the display window. I pretended to shop, but really just wanted to keep one keen eye on my future-life-partner and toothy-dreamboat-forever. Then...

The salesperson: "Is there anything I can help you with today?"
Me (young, awkward, bad haircut): "No, I'm just looking."
Mom (where'd she come from?): "Actually, she'd really love that poster of Matt Damon."
Me (horrified): "Mom."
Mom (feigning innocence like moms do after they've embarrassed you): "What? You love Matt Damon."
Salesperson: "Actually, we were going to take that down today, so if you want it, you can have it."

At which point, the salesperson took Matt Damon out of the display window, rolled him up, and handed him to me. That is how MD came to live in my bedroom for the next four years, and how I decided that Canadians are the nicest people ever.

Sincerely hoping I'm part Canuck,

Kendall

Oh, Canada.

I love a world in which curling exists. Talk about a ridiculous, and ridiculous looking sport. A sport that has existed since the 1500s! That is old. And it is still very, very popular in Canada--land of my ancestors. Now, can you imagine my surprise, as I was watching the curling semi-finals of the Olympics, to encounter one John Morris, Curler:

That's him, second from left. Cute. John Morris. What? You're not convinced?

Bam! (Notice: his dumbbell is actually two curling stones. And, NB: good curling stones cost about $1500 per stone, because the granite they use is so rare). Curling is not just for your Canadian grandparents anymore, kids.

This got me thinking. What else has Canada given the world? I've constructed a partial list.

1. Me. If my grandparents had not both been in Canada to meet one another (and in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan no less), there would be no Rhonda (perish the thought), and therefore, no me. So, Canada, the world thanks you. My blog thanks you.

2. John Morris. We've covered that.

3. Macintosh toffee. (It comes in the loveliest plaid box, and when you purchase it, you have to SLAM it against something, to break it into bite-sized pieces. Words cannot express the satisfaction of hammering your candy against a counter top in order to eat it.)

4. Alice Munro. One of my very favorite short story writers. In fact, I've been reading her stories all day. (Prove it.) Okay, I will.

5. Bryan Adams. Four words: Waking. Up. The. Neighbors. Oh, sorry, Neighbours.

6. Best Accent Ever. Don't get me started. That Canadian accent turns me to a puddle of mush in about four seconds. I'm not kidding. It makes me swoon.

7. DeGrassi High. Before there was "My So-Called Life," or "Gossip Girl," there was DeGrassi.

8. Alanis Morisette. I got Jagged Little Pill as a Christmas gift in the 8th grade. I listened to it continuously for about six months, and found out that I was really, really pissed off about a lot of things. Without her album, I might never have known. I certainly wouldn't be a writer.

9. White Spot. They serve their kids' meals in a PIRATE PACK. And, they don't look down on you if the only condiment you want for your fries is mayonnaise. In Canada, at White Spot, mayonnaise as condiment is totally acceptable.

10. Ryan Reynolds. As far as I can tell, my readership is about 99.9% female. But that male .1% out there, even you can appreciate that Mr. Reynolds is not too hard on the eyes.

In conclusion: THANK YOU, CANADA.

(What am I forgetting?)

Kendall

Kendall Makes a Surprising (Not Too Surprising) Discovery

Last year, to announce my thesis defense, I printed up a bunch of clown poster that I thought were really funny and cool and weird, and posted them all over the English department. Most everybody else found the posters not so funny, not so cool, but definitely weird. And creepy. I was accused of causing nightmares. I heard more than one person announce how delighted they would be when my thesis defense was over and the awful posters came down.

I was so confused, because I didn't feel frightened by the clowns. If anything, I felt a degree of identification. And yesterday, looking through old photos on my computer, I figured out why:

Me, surprised, at my twenty-fifth birthday party (surprised by not only the birthday party, but also by James Joyce's erotic love-letters to his wife, which were a unique gift from a dear friend who went to the trouble of printing them off the internet):

Chucko the Clown, surprised for reasons unknown:

Apparently, we're related.