Clareified

which is kinda like pulling a hamstring, but it’s not so much physically painful as costs money and makes your hand strike your forehead while your mouth says “D’oh.”

So, this story requires that I rewind a week and cross the country by 2000 miles. As you all know, some two years ago I got my awesome Liberace sneakers. I wore them. A lot. Everywhere. Then, about four months ago, I noticed the sole was peeling off. Plus, the pink hue was fading.

“Oh no! I have to get a new pair!” I exclaimed.

So, one of my “to do list” items for my Vegas trip was “get new pair of Liberace sneakers.” I wanted blue this time.

F-train volunteered to take me. He claimed it would be his birthday present to me (not the sneakers or the entrance fee, just his company to the museum…once again, the answer to today’s installment of ’spot the Jew,’ the Catholic boy, F-train.) But I think mostly because “F-train in the Liberace museum” is the gay F-train joke that writes itself.

So, Saturday, I met up with my twitter buddy Zidonia, who lives in Vegas, Ftrain, This is Not April (lies, IT WAS TOTALLY APRIL) and the evil chocolate pudding pusher Jason for lunch and then the Liberace musuem. Well, they knew about the lunch, I knew about the musuem. They would find this out later. Like right around…”can we get the check, please? The Liberace musuem closes in half an hour!”

Sadly, by the time we got there, we were already too late. We pulled into the parking lot at quarter to five and the main museum was already closed. WORSE STILL…

“DAWN, THEY DON’T HAVE YOUR SNEAKERS ANYMORE,” F-train said all triumphantly.

I didn’t believe him.

I ran inside the gift shop, which was still open, to look for myself.

They were not where they were the last time.

“Excuse me,” I said desperately to the nice lady manning the counter, “where are the sneakers?”
“Which sneakers, dear?”

F-train chimes in “the horrible hideous Liberace sneakers!”

The woman behind the counter lifts up her leg and reveals the left foot of her black and silver pair of “hideous Liberace sneakers” on her feet.

F-train turned bright red. Assface.

“Yes! Those! Where are they?”

“They don’t make them anymore dear. I’m sorry.”
My sad crestfallen face must have made an impression though, because she then said “I know someone who might be able to help you.” She scribbled an aol address on a slip of paper and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I mumbled stuffing it into my purse.

Meanwhile, the rest of the horrible, evil people in the store with me, were walking around making comments like:

“How did everyone not KNOW this guy was gay?”

“Did he leave any money to AIDS research? Cause that’s what he died of!”

“What has gone wrong in my life that I have ended up in the Liberace museum”?

Jason took this photo:

Why does he hate Liberace’s confidence so much?! Haters! Except April who bought me Li-bear-ace to cheer me up: @thisisnotapril and @realdawnsummers matching Li-bear-aces! on Twitpic (He’s pretty cute, though he’s a little judgmental…don’t ask.)

Anyway, when I got back to New York, I found the little paper, but decided to try google first. Googling turned up an ebay auction, of these:

THEY WERE 99 cents! DUUUDE!!

I watched them for TWO days! Still $0.99.

So, I bid $2.

“You have the winning bid”! Mr ebay informed me. Ex-cell-ent!

Then, NOT ONE HOUR later, I was outbid! Now 2.50 was the leading bid. So, I bid $5. “Sorry, you’ve been outbid!”
$6.
Sorry, outbid.
$8.
Outbid!
Mind you, I had watched these things untouched FOR TWO DAYS! But suddenly, now I’m in a LOSING bidding WAR!

The whole thing smelled SO fishy! Like the seller was upping the price just so I couldn’t get them for the ridiculously low advertised price.

I couldn’t find any proof, so I angrily spent Saturday afternoon, driving the price up so that whoever this dummy bidder was would be stuck paying the highest price they bid for the shoes. And it woulda worked too, except…
“You are now the current high bidder.”
Wait…what??
OH NO!
And then I sat and stared at the screen, hoping my nemesis would jump in there and outbid me again.
I waited. And waited.
Made lunch.
Waited.
Watched the World Cup finals.
And waited.
Made dinner, went to sleep, woke up, showered, made breakfast, went to work, waited waited waited.
“Congratulations.”

So…um…I own a new pair of Liberace sneakers.

Yay?
And F-train still owes me a birthday present.

I have a bone to pick with one Mrs. Pearatty: What. The. Hell?
The last time Mrs. Pearatty came to visit me in my fine city, she “took the train to the plane.” To wit, she took the subway to JFK airport because she had a terrible host who didn’t drive her to the airport. Later, when I asked her how it was, she said “actually pretty fast and easy.”
This, my friends, is a damn hell ass lie.

Last week, I was going to Las Vegas on a Thursday night flight. Since I’m pretty strapped for cash I decided two things: 1) I would leave for the airport straight from work and 2) I would take this long sang about “train to the plane.”

I got on the subway in Manhattan at 3 pm. My flight left at 6 pm. I had to change trains twice and then wait for the A train. Turns out, there are TWO A trains.

That’s right. Despite having the whole 26 letter alphabet at its disposal AND the existence of a Q train, the MTA decides to have two As and NO I or O trains. THE HELL?!

Anyway, I get on the A(2) train and I’m on this thing for THREE days. Finally, I get off at the airport stop and really it’s a train station for an airport TRAM! Not only that, but this tram costs FIVE DOLLARS! And it doesn’t accept my monthly metrocard!

DUDE!

I’m POOR! This is why I’m taking the SUBWAY to the airport! I wait 15 minutes for the tram and when I get on, I immediately fear for my life. The tram creaks along the tracks like a car on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. Its oblong form rocks, not-so-gently, from side to side as it weaves from the subway station to the terminal. All you can do at this point is get right with whatever God you believe in.

I finally get to my terminal, run down to the Delta check-in station, stick my credit card in the kiosk and wait for my boarding pass.

And wait.

The computer says it needs more information: Please tell me when your flight is schedule to leave:
12:00AM-9:00 AM
9:00 AM-6:00PM
6:00 PM-12:00AM

Um. Well played, troll under the bridge, well played. I pick the second 6:00PM.

I need more information, the computer says again.

If my life were a movie, instead of the tragicomic reality show that it is, clouds would now begin to close in around my head, ominous music would play.

Please enter your destination.

Las Vegas.

Is your flight the 6pm to Las Vegas?

Yes.

You are too late to checkin to this flight. Would you like to schedule a later flight?

Yes.

There are no later flights.

Khhaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!

I hit clear and did the whole thing again, same result. it was now 5:25.

I pushed my way to the ticket counter, one dude directed me to a supervisor lady.

“How can I help you, honey”?

“The computer won’t let me check-in. My flight leaves at six.”

I hand her my ID. As slowly as is humanly possible, she takes it, spins the computer screen toward her, puts on her glasses, adjusts her chair, looks for each letter of my name on the keyboard, squints, presses it, cleans her eyeglass lens, coughs, puts her glasses back on her face, presses the next letter.

I am DYING.

“Yeah, sorry honey, that flight has boarded. Checkin is closed.”

“But it doesn’t leave till six! I was here at 5! (Lies) I’ve been at that computer kiosk thing for 30 minutes! (More lies) It’s a domestic flight. I thought you had to be there an hour before!” And cue the tears.

“Alright, honey, let me see what I can do.”

She types some stuff in, gives me a boarding pass and says “the security line is pretty long, I don’t know if you’ll make it, ask the guard at the front if you can go through. Good luck, honey.”

I run to the front of the security line and simply hand the guard my boarding pass and driver’s license like it was the most normal thing in the world to enter a line from the side after ducking under two ropes.

He took it!

I ran through the metal detectors, grateful that I didn’t bring my laptop. I ran and ran and ran until I collapsed in a wheezing, sweaty mess in my seat.

Victory was mine!

Next Stop, Las Vegas

13 is an unlucky number. Last year it killed Michael Jackson and the Charlie’s Angels hair lady. Just trying to stay safe today. All’s quiet on the Clareified front.

I am a first generation American. I grew up in a poor black “inner city” in Brooklyn. My mother, born and raised- like my father- in Panama, decided very early on to make me as American as her paltry salary as a nursing aide could afford.

I ate my fast food at McDonald’s, wore Nike sneakers on my feet, watched Saturday morning cartoons and spoke only English in my house.

I was one of the last generation of kids who were bussed into all-white schools in the name of integration and even though it was the close of the 70s, angry white parents egged our school bus and shouted profanities in our little brown faces. I was a preteen during the race riots, in Brooklyn, between blacks and the Hasidim and blacks and the Koreans. In college, I majored in Political Science and during law school I volunteered at death penalty clinics in New Orleans.

I explain all of that to demonstrate as clearly as I can, that my eyes are wide open. I KNOW of this country’s tortured relationship with the poor, with blacks, with women, and with immigrants. I have lived firsthand, the frustation of being voiceless and disenfranchised. However, and I say this without equivocation: I still LOVE THIS COUNTRY.

Sure, most days that means repping for BKNY — but I love all of America. I shed tears for days watching New Orleans underwater, I prayed for California when earthquakes devastated the Bay Area, I was crushed to see the destruction visited upon Oklahoma City by twisted, evil minds. THIS is my country. THESE are my people. When they compete on the world stage wearing OUR flag and OUR colors, they will have my support. When they are robbed by stupidface judges, I will complain loudest on their behalf. Whether they win or they lose, I have their proverbial backs — be it in sports I love, like figure skating or baseball, or sports I have no idea what the hell is going on, like fencing or *ahem* soccer.

So it saddens me that as the U.S. is set to face Ghana in the next round of the World Cup on Saturday, that so many of the African-American tweeps I follow on twitter are expressing uncertainity about who they will be cheering for. I saw one comment which said something to the effect of “I almost feel like if I root for the U.S. to beat Ghana, it’ll be like denying slavery happened.” Wait. What?

First of all, the United States soccer team isn’t composed of a homogenous group of rich, white landowning men. They haven’t marched into South Africa to defeat the Ghanans by force. This is not a global game of Risk. It’s a game of SOCCER. (Or football if you’re gonna be all snooty about it.) Yeah, I suppose it sounds all cool to denounce the mighty U.S. in the abstract — but how does it sound when you actually look these young athletes in the face and call them “colonialists” and “slave traders.”

Is Jozy Altidore, a first generation American, one of the youngest and most talented strikers in the game, a dirty imperialist that you cannot root for? Was that the stand you took six months ago when his parents’ country, Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake? What about Tim Howard? Ridiculed as “handicapped” by the British press when he tried to play soccer in England. Is he too privileged to be worthy of your cheers? I don’t know the individual stories of the Ghana team. But I do know that for the black men on the U.S. soccer team to withstand the pressures to play basketball or football and end up being world class soccer athletes, is pretty dang extraordinary. The United States in 2010 is an amazing place. It has eleven-fifty million problems, but for right now, I look to the White House and the New York State house and there are leaders there who look like me. The President of the U.S. won the Nobel Peace prize. I celebrate that. I want the U.S. to win the World Cup. And I want to see Heculez Gomez – a Mexican-American- cheesing on the Wheaties box when they do. The black and brown members of the U.S. team shouldn’t be shunned by their own communities at home when they face off against “ancestral” teams like Ghana or Mexico.

For sure, it’s all just a game. And everyone should be free to cheer whatever team they want to cheer for. You decide who your people are. As for me, come Saturday — and however many World Cup games after Saturday, the U.S. team is blessed to play for — I will be yelling my fool head off for the American boys. I will cheer them as they face off against black opponents, brown opponents, or white opponents. Wherever my loyalties may lie when we’re home, when the U.S. competes on the world stage, only three colors matter.

And who’s got two thumbs and has updated their Amazon wish list?

So Caitycaity shows me the entry she has for me in her phone and it says Dawn Summers/Stephane.

Me: You see, Vinnay, Caity has only known me a year and she already knows how to spell my damn name! What the hell?
Vinnay: Ok… well, here’s the thing. I DO know how to spell your name, but half the time I’m texting you, I’m drunk, so I end up putting an i in there.

Everyone I hate can be separated into two categories: people who have bad beaten me and people who don’t follow me on twitter.

I am NOT drunk, no matter what you hear. Yes, I was doing double shots of some Glen Livet thing or another because they were out of Jameson’s. But Vinnay was drinking some wuss sorority girl beer, so I wouldn’t believe his eye witness account. And Caity was Ms. Out Flops Dawn A lot, so you know, raycist.

Anyway, I am up watching the US tie it up against Slovenia, blogging and feeling FINE! So, whose story do you believe?

Somehow, This is Not April always seems to know what’s good for me. Even when most everything else seems to point in another direction. This is why every Monday, she is my best friend forever.
So I’m being all fiscally irresponsible, recklessly spontaneous and a third thing, so this sentence has three parts and flying out West today.
I have some trepidation about the trip, but mostly, I’m glad to be getting away. Getting out of my head, etc. The land of 24 hour entertainment and $1 Shots of Johnny Walker Blue will welcome me with open arms.

I have some more stuff to say, but I don’t want it miscontrued as having to do with something it has nothing to do with or with any particular people, so we’ll save it for another time.

I do want to talk a bit about anger. I remember being angry a lot as a kid, but then not so much as an adult. Frankly, after graduating from college, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I was really and truly angry. (2009 was the last time.) And each time, it caused me to explode and do something really immature and say something silly that I immediately regretted. And each time, I vowed never to get angry again. It’s a pointless emotion, really.

I much more prefer my calm. My analytical. My laughter. My pity. Heck, even my contempt, beats my anger. Those are things I can work with.

Anger, well, anger looks like this.

This woman was banned from tournament Scrabble for a year. I can’t really remember if I ever met her, but my sense is she used to be a tournament director and that her husband is one of the elite players in the game. And well, I hope that not only my own embarrassing screeds, but the image of this screen shot will keep me grounded and away from the angry darkness.