November 15, 2005
Confessions
I like the Ellen Show.
There, I said it, phew.
Posted by meloknee at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
Have I ever told you...
...about my 15 minutes of fame? Except that it's kind of more like a month of fame since that's how long magazines sit on the shelves.
A friend of mine, Andy Davey, is a professional photographer down in Santa Monica. He was in Fresno visiting one weekend and asked if I would want to be in a photo shoot he was doing for a magazine, Bikini, he explained that it was not a bathing suit mag, so I said yes!
He asked me to wear my glasses and to bring my retainer, he wanted me to look like a nerd, which is easy enough, since I am [a nerd].
It was a blast, I got my hair done, make-up, nails, eyebrows tweased, a whole freakin' wardrobe. My payment: free Hard Candy nail polish and Puma's oh and of course, the chance to become a star. Not that I, at 5' 2" and chubby round face, expected to become a model, but a girl can dream, right?
So, here it is, my claim to fame:
All photos by Andrew Knudson-Davey
Posted by meloknee at 01:15 PM | Comments (8)
October 20, 2005
Have I ever told you about the time...
I went Dumpster diving?
Let's see, it was about 3 and a half years ago, when I was still living in Fresno. As the group home/social work business doesn't pay much, I had taken a part-time job doing books at Cost Plus (now known as World Market). My mother had worked in a little shop by the Cost Plus when I was a little girl and I loved going in there. I remember being surrounded by all of the exotic knick-knacks and back in the day they had lots of clothes and jewelry.
I loved working at Cost Plus. I had been friends with many of my coworkers for years before I started working there, in fact that's how I got the job. We lived by the true, old-school, Cost Plus spirit. This was supposed to be a fun, mystical, whimsical place. We played with the toys, ate the food, took naps on the couches, and our customers loved us for it.
Shortly before I started working there, word came out that they were building a new Cost Plus - World Market, in the fancy-schmancy part of town. We new this meant doom for our wonderful old store. It was only a matter of time before the doors would close on our little piece o' heaven. All of the snobby, uptight employees left to go to the new store. The rest of us stuck it out half-heartedly believing the company lies that swore they were keeping both stores open. Many of our customers had been shopping there for 30-odd years. They were not happy about the new store, they wrote angry letters to the corporate office. We sat around with the old-timers (there were some retirement communities within walking distance), them leaning on their canes, us hopping up on our check-out counters, shot the shit and reminisced of better times; times before the horrid Riverpark shopping Center made its way to the Central Valley.
Soon enough the news hit us, like a slap in the face, or a fax that came through that wasn't supposed to be seen by anyone except the store manager. We had six weeks to inventory the store, pack it up and say goodbye. Heart broken, most of us refused to take the offer of a job at the new store, knowing that we would be lower on the totem pole and looked down upon for not being part of the elite first group. We took settlement packages instead, and lots of free merchandise. We cleaned out old closets and found newspaper clippings of some of the first ads put out in the Fresno Bee when Cost Plus opened. That Fresno store was the sixth in the Cost Plus chain, now there are over one hundred.
On the last day, after the moving trucks were packed, the store was emptied and locked for the last time, I went out for some drinks with my manager and a couple other coworkers. After we had thrown a few beers back, only mere feet away from the new and hated World Market, we remembered something that was in one of the utility closets. Two huge boxes of Tampax Regular Tampons. We didn't know who had ordered them, but we didn't have a dispenser in the store bathroom, so they rarely got used, except the the few employees that knew the secret hiding place of the oh-so-free tampons. I don't think I had bought tampons for the entire 8 months that I worked there.
My manager and I stood up and demanded that the non-drinker drive us back to the old store. We were determined to find these tampons. When we got there we asked around, there were still some of the movers there. None of them knew what had happened to these precious boxes. There was only one option, we figured since all the movers and packers were men that they probably just threw them out, after all they weren't merchandise. There we were, slightly tipsy, laughing our heads off as we climbed the huge, massive, industrial-sized Dumpster. We sat at the top for a little while before we jumped in and dug for the tampons. We dug, we unburied, we turned over display cases, we came up empty handed time and time again. At last, as the alcohol wore off, we were defeated.
My manager and I went Dumpster diving for tampons and we never found them. We sure did have a fun day on our last day of work however. Only a week after that I was packing my own moving truck and was on my way to Seattle. I only wish that I had had a box of 1,000 free tampons in that truck.
Posted by meloknee at 04:24 PM | Comments (2)