Just a 10-letter word

“Bad decisions!” she squealed with delight, sipping emphatically from a tacky concert-venue rumrunner out of an oversized plastic tube. The unnaturally raspberry-red frost-alcohol mixture greeted the humidity of a late August St. Augustine with too much enthusiasm, meeting a melting and leaving beads of dripping condensation.

In this 17-dollar drink she will find salvation, elation in the name of warmth and dancing, hips belonging now to fuzzed out reggae and the joints passed around new strangers. Anyone becomes a friend under red and green stage lights, everyone a reggae fan when the buzz is forming and the weed is flowing.

From the comfort of the comptroller’s chair, objectively her body looks good standing there in the steaming pillars of sudden wafting smoke. The crickets are drowned out easily by the joyful howls of a thousand hippies.

And what fun it is, a gathering, a group of people who don’t know the name of nor her emotional connection to the warm-up band playing. The atmosphere is palpable, intangibly, the shovel to her face ringing in her ears like 15ft high speaker stacks. A man in Henry Rollin’s uniform of black wraps tense fingers around the microphone in rebellion.

A belly, paunched, joins the artist on stage, and her eyes strain to reconcile the writer that for so long fueled the turning of her notebook’s page with this weathered father of three in a Rhymesayers tee.

Age and change, a peaceful range of rage steps in to take the place of youthful angst and anger’s plague.

Dungeons and Dragons

To add to my ever increasing list of random hobbies, I recently accepted an invitation to play a biweekly game of Dungeons and Dragons with some friends of mine that just moved back to town. 
This is the brief back story that I wrote for my character, Bienefeldt Orianen.

Bienefeldt – Eladrin Wizard

Bienefeldt Orianen is calm and ageless, carrying secrets by the handful. Bienefeldt lives alone in a city on the edge of fey and human growing ever frustrated by the feeling that he is incomplete. Truth be told, there is a girl. There was a girl – but isn’t there always? A girl that slipped away, enchanted by the pull of normalcy and domesticity.

In earlier years, Bienefeldt was drawn by the curious odors of adventure and left his home to traverse the mountains on the horizon, getting sucked into a great fight against the Drow, the dark elves. He did not know then (but he knows now – oh how he knows now) that the shimmering-haired girl – Irina – in his hometown, that he had always taken note of in the markets and town gatherings, had taken note of him too… yet tragically he never gathered up the nerve to say anything to her until the night before he left town. He expressed his love and she reciprocated the emotions silently, her eyes glistening with tears and adoration, knowing that they could never be – something that Bienefeldt would soon come to understand. She did not want adventure, she wanted the sounds of laughing babies and the smell of baking bread – and a husband that came home every night. Bienefeldt left the next morning, feeling both relieved to have told his love the truth but also a simmering anger at the universe for arranging the cards in such a tantalizingly frustrating manner. He made a pact with himself to make sure that Irina was always safe and taken care of, though he was determined not to disrupt the life she had created for herself. An act of true love, he told himself as he left his home behind.

In the fight against the Drow, Bienefeldt met up with Traevaran Silvermane [a groupmate’s character], a relative of Irina’s, and the aftermath of carnage and destruction led to Bienefeldt’s family taking Traevaran in. The two became fast friends, even studying together under the same Master of Magic, though their different styles of magical ability led to yet another parting of ways. Traevaren felt the magic more intuitively through his emotions and passions, while Bienefeldt connected more to the magic of nature - he also studied much more by the book as opposed to Silvermane’s instinctive sorcery. After they split Bienefeldt realized that he missed Traevaren more than he let on, as over time he had grown attached to the qualities in Traevaren that reminded Bienefeldt so strongly of that girl with the dancing eyes – though of course Bienefeldt would never admit as much out loud.

After years of living alone, though content in his comfortably cluttered cottage in the woods, Bienefeldt began to wonder if perhaps there was more adventure yet to be had. Danger awaited, for sure, but it was distraction that Bienefeldt sought, for even after all this time he loved Irina with the hazy gaze of one who stares into a nostalgic past more often than the present. He set out, lying to himself in attempts to find excuses for his excursion, not wanting to admit to himself that he hoped to check in on the lovely Irina and the family that should have been his.

Scheer Joy

So...I think this will be Post 1 in a series about things that Keri GEEKS OUT about.

Today's post, darlings, is about an email I received this morning.

First, a little backstory.
So there's this show on TV called The League. And I freaking love it. Real talk: it may be my favorite show..yknow, the show you'll drop everything and change schedules and do what you gotta to be in front of the tv with friends when it comes on. That's a pretty big deal for me, since I really don't give two hoots about tv. I'm fine if the tv doesn't get turned on at all, so for a show to have me hooked like this should say something. Anyways, I didn't even get into until the 2nd season because I figured it was just a dumb show about Fantasy Football. Yeah, uh, I was wrong because again, it is hilarious!

But my favorite actor on the show is a guy named Paul Scheer. I love his character, I love his goofy looks, I just love him. He's actually in a BUNCH of stuff that I count among my favorites. In doing research (namely checking out his IMDB) I realized he pretty much works with every show I love, with every actor I love. For instance, he is on an episode of Party Down, he's also on Children's Hospital, he was in a hilarious sketch show with Aziz Ansari and Rob Huebel. AND he loves Odd Future just as much as I do. It's a freakin match made in heaven.

One day I was wondering if he had a blog or anything, and I stumbled upon his Tumblr. This was back when I was first starting there (I'm 22 and a non-hipster, it takes me a while to get to new things) a few months ago, so I immediately clicked follow. I noticed that he had an email address, and ever one for spontaneity and slight creepiness, I figured I'd send him one. I wasn't expecting a response (I was emailing mostly out of boredom), but regardless last May I fired off this email:

Paul,

You sir are a scholar and a gentleman. I'm sure you get tons of mail but I was feeling generous and wanted to give you a completely superfluous email chock full of hyperbolic and gratuitous butt-kissing that maybe you can look upon in your hours of less-than-ebullience. Big words!

Alright, here goes.

If the very gods had deigned create a comedic genius as subtle and wonderful a comic as you, they could not have had any expectation that their hands were not capable. A true work of humor and brevity as you can only rise organically up out of our Earth's roiling core leaving the crumpled debris of tectonic plates rent asunder in his wake. Roaring up from the magma-filled bowels of the hell pits of our planet you, Paul Scheer, appeared like a shining vision of all that is gloriously funny and smirked down upon the masses. With hands raised, his hairless dome glistening in the preHellenistic sun, the writhing and despondent populations bowed and began to rejoice. Hope was spread throughout the planet in forms of slow smiles and reluctant chuckles until finally all of society was wrought with the most pleasant of plagues- that of comedy.


That is all. Um...I think I exhausted my verbal lexicon. Well, now I have. Uh...I'm excited to see the cast of The League at Bonnaroo this summer....happy Friday the 13th...have a good weekend!

See? I told you. Spontaneous and a little creepy at the same time (it's how I roll). Anyway, I fired it off and never heard back and frankly I had forgotten all about it. I didn't end up getting to see The League cast perform at Bonnaroo, though we did get to see them drive past in a golf cart. We followed them for a bit but didn't get to them in time to get a (creepy stalker) picture.

SO imagine my surprise when this morning at work as I was doing my first-thing-email-check and saw that Paul had actually written me a response! Oh my gosh I was dancing in my chair. It's always really cool when I'm reminded that entertainment figures are just people, after all. Anyways, his response:

Keri,

That is the best email ever. I'll forever save your hyperbolic gratuitous butt kissing, rest assured that I'm a truly horrible person.
I hope you got to see the League at B'roo. Our Sunday was really good. The 1st day was was rustier.

Thanks again Keri for your email. Sorry it's taken me so long to get to it.
Be well.

Le sigh....so short and yet so poignant. Haha. Like I said, I am completely geeking out. This is my favorite celebrity-ish encounter since Patton Oswalt verbally sparred with me on Facebook. For reals though, Paul Scheer is a ridiculously funny dude. I'm pretty frickin humbled that he wrote me back! Ack! I feel like such a little fan girl!