Awright Already!

Stephanie tagged me, and even though I've already done this one, I'm fresh out of ideas for the day, so here goes:

Eight Random Facts

1. I used to sing in bars. It started when we were sitting there having an Amaretto sour and munching potato skins and listening to this guy with about five keyboards around him. He looked like an astronaut in the lunar module. He played The Way We Were for this couple on their anniversary; and naturally my loud mouth got me into trouble. He heard me singing and yelled out, "Who IS that?!?!" Fortunately, he liked the sound and the couple was very nice, so I sang the song for them. It's amazing how many lounge entertainers will let you come up and sing.

2. When I was three, a goat in the San Diego zoo petting area ate the back of my dress. I spent the rest of the day with my mom's jacket tied around my backside and have hated goats ever since.

3. I am quite adept at injuring myself. I trip over air pockets. I have managed to fall down in front of nearly every teacher I ever had, a good number of dates, and even a couple of elected officials, who, of course, waited to see how many press members were watching before looking concerned and helping me up.

4. I read the back of the book before the start. Except in whodunits. But I especially cruise the last few pages if it looks like there will be a love triangle. I read one once and wound up rooting for the wrong guy and it made me mad for weeks.

5. I used to belong to a group of medieval re-enactors. I can swordfight, as long as the weapon is split PVC pipe with foam wrapped around it. Call them nerds all you want; those people see more action than the characters in Grey's Anatomy. And those women! SO FUN. It takes a very special kind of confidence for a 200 pound woman to wear a chain mail bikini.

6. My church is stupid enough to let me teach the children. "Yes! I read stories about pirates who never manage to actually steal anything and women who go to sleep on park benches and wake up in Medieval Scotland and sheikhs and cowboys and have overwrought passages full of Thundering Breastplates, Protuberances that stand at attention, and Enchanted Grottos that cry while becoming One With The Cosmos. Send your little dears right in!"

7. My love affair with Dr. Phil ended long ago, but I can't stop watching him. His show is rapidly becoming Maury Povich, and will be Jerry Springer before too much longer, but I'm still fascinated with the moment he'll utter something like "When the gopher's in the hole, it's too late to march in the parade!"

8. I could never in a million years go on the Atkins diet. I have never met the bread I didn't lust over intently. I love to look at bread. I love to touch bread. If I could smell, I would probably swoon at the scent of bread. I love white bread, that you can roll into soft spongy pellets; I love dark chewy nutty bread that weighs as much as a small hybrid car. I don't really like crunchy crust, but that's okay. I'll scrape out the good parts. Life without bread just isn't worth living.

If you would like to do the Eight Random Facts, please do so! I'm through with tagging. I can never run fast enough.

Must be all that bread.

Hold Me, and Cute Guy Thursday

It's official, y'all. My daughter, my baby girl, my precious little daffodil, has a BOYFRIEND.

He's a really sweet kid, and I like him. So does her dad. And I was happy for her when she floated home SQUEEEing about him. She took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and wrote to him that she'd had a crush all year, and she was tired of waiting on him, and would he like to be her boyfriend. He accepted, and told her that he'd liked her, too, but was too nervous to ask her. I thought, how cute is this? How amazingly sweet?

Then I remembered what happened on the dates I went on when I was her age.

Hold me.

While I wander around in denial for a few days, join me in admiring His Cuteness, from Firefly and Waitress, Nathan Fillion.

Keep Your Bleach-infused Eyewash Handy

Don't say we didn't warn you.

Taming Kate

Missie: What Kate needs to tame is falling out of her peasant blouse.

Robyn: Apparently, to tame Kate you have to rip off your shirt and wrestle her to the ground- but keep your sidearm in place in case you have to shoot her.

Dark Challenge

Missie: The only thing that isn’t wrong with this cover is the font.

Robyn: The name of your colorist? Pleeeeease, darling? Or at least the name of the salon?

A Silver Mirror

Missie: Why is he sucking her eyebrow?

Robyn: God, I'm fabulous. No wonder you love me.

Golden Fancy

Robyn: She "escaped the clutches of a lusty Mormon???" Explain that, Mitt Romney!

Missie: Joan Collins escapes the lusty Mormon reaching through the McDonald’s drive through.

Up next: Half-breeds gone wild!

Proud Mommy Moment with a Side of Cringe

My daughter was just in her first school musical. Aladdin, Jr., produced by Disney, follows the same basic plot of the animated film and has the same songs. Aladdin gets caught stealing, Princess Jasmine meets him in the marketplace, he gets thrown into a cave where he finds the genie's lamp, etc. Very cute reworking of the movie into a musical specifically aimed at Junior High talent levels.

It was Junior High, y'all. Really bad sets and homemade costumes and That's My Baby Up There! and some girls having to play boy roles because only three guys auditioned and That's My Baby Up There! and a few kids who were, perhaps, less than gifted vocally and That's My Baby Up There! and a couple of kids who weren't necessarily the best actors but not My Baby Up There!

In spite of those things, it was a great production. The kids worked like slaves and they gave a wonderful performance. All the adults were pretty impressed; we were not expecting anything of that caliber. The kids were thrilled. (Blogger was acting up this morn, can't give you pictures. Darn.)

I have acted since I was five. Musical Theatre was my major in college, and I have always wondered if I could have made a career out of it if I had gone to New York instead of staying home and getting married and having kids. Not that I think I got the raw end of the deal, mind you. If you knew my kids you'd know I didn't give up anything.

Which brings me to my daughter. Beth has inherited the ham gene times two, and she really is very talented. I don't know many other 15 year olds who will sit with their moms and watch Gene Kelly and Howard Keel and Barbra Streisand and be just as enthralled as she is. She can sing Phantom and Les Miz with me, and she's a pretty good little actress. I used to be so happy that I could share this with her.

Now, I am a curious yet horrifying mix of pride and jealousy. She was so good, you guys. She's a natural. I was busting out of my seams and crying and smiling, but down deep inside there was a little flare of envy. Except for special occasions when there's a church thing, I don't get to do this anymore. And I want to. She is getting to do all the stuff I loved doing, the stuff I miss doing, apparently more than I had realized. And I'm jealous. These are what I call Mommy of the Year moments- when I look at myself and I'm really disappointed in what I see.

Ah, well. Maybe I can take comfort in the fact that I'm not a stage mother; I'm not living out my dreams through my kid. I don't want to act and sing vicariously. I want to do it myself.

Location, Location, Location

Just re-read Anne Perry's The Cater Street Hangman, her kick-off book to the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series. A series I totally adore.

Now, I will freely admit to being a total sucker for foggy, gas-lit Victorian London. It's one of my favorite settings, and will usually get the book/movie/show an automatic star just for that alone. And I admire how Perry can achieve the iconic feel of the place yet still make it seem immediate and real.

How do you decide your settings? I don't like to go on and on about a place I've never been, but writing only on the towns I've actually lived in is ZZZzzzzzzz...

And you just know if I wrote about a city with which I had only a passing familiarity I'd hear about it. T.V. shows have people clad in solid black leather in Las Vegas or Miami in the summer, or show a little town on the plains of Kansas with mountains in the background with nary a peep; but let me get one little detail wrong and I'd be subject to angry blog bees buzzing about how Seattle doesn't have a Chinese restaurant that close to that neighborhood, or how no proper Bostonian would ever wear that, or that it never rains in Southern California.

Which is, pretty much, why I write fictional towns whenever possible. Of course, that works for me because I don't tend to write the place as a character in the story. If the setting is New Orleans or New York, the town is as much a character as the hero and heroine.

What about you? Real city or land of make believe?

The Winnah!! And, Oh, Yeah, More About Me

Thanks for your awesome snarks, everyone. Special honors go to Bernita with "Whaddya mean you're allergic?" and Kaitlin for "I am sooo beautifuuul...to meeeeee." You receive a free subscription to this blog and the thanks of a grateful nation.

The winnah of an Amazon gift certificate and the title of Snarkstress supreme is...

a tie! StarvingWriteNow for her "Come on baby, I need the bra more than you do." and Stephanie for "Velvet spandex blend pants! I feel so free!"

If you will both write me at robwriter6@yahoo.com with your email addys, your gifts will be winging their way to you with champagne wishes and Fabio dreams!

I used to be upset when I wasn't tagged for stuff. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms. Be careful what you wish for. Now, it seems I'm getting tagged every time I turn around. So here are (courtesy of December Quinn) 8 random things about me. And if you wanna do it, go right ahead, but I don't think I know 8 people to tag! Or, at least 8 people I haven't already tagged for something and I'd like to keep the few friends I have. Here we go:

1. I can sing the entire score from Les Miserables. And sing it pretty well, actually.
2. I love the Beatles, but can't stand the Stones.
3. God and my children very nicely frosted my hair, but I've chosen to hide it under Nice n' Easy 119.
4. I can wiggle my nose like a rabbit.
5. A guy broke up with me in college because his mama threw a fit when she found out I wasn't Jewish. And nice Jewish girls are thick upon the ground in Denton, TX, let me tell you.
6. I bruised my husband's arm while gripping it in labor. It was a sacrifice he was not prepared to make. Like I cared.
7. I love channel surfing (when I have time, which is, like, never) and am very territorial about the remote. Don't you touch it. I'll cut you.
8. I don't care for vampire books (shag a zombie tick, anyone?) but I go into raptures over werewolves. Insert your own "Robyn Loves Wildlife" joke here.

My New Photo Album

Every once in awhile I see a picture that makes me chuckle...

Or a picture that makes me laugh...

Or one that makes me spew whatever I'm drinking out of my nose.

Some pictures make me shout "How cool!"

And others take my breath away.

But sometimes, only sometimes, do I see a picture that restores my faith in humanity.

I don't care what anyone says. We are cool, y'all. So cool.

You Think It's So Easy...YOU Do It

Snark, that is. Come up with the best one-liner snark you can for this classic Fabio cover:




Those pants! That vapid expression! That thundering breastplate! Get your snark on and post in the comments until Wednesday midnight (US Central time.) On Friday, Missie and I will announce the winner of an Amazon gift certificate and the coveted title of Snarkster/Snarkstress Supreme!

Just Because I Want To

Blogger and youtube have a conspiracy against me. You'll have to click the link.

Enjoy!