Thing of the Week: Being Happy About a Green Door, The Philly Accent/Philly Boy Roy

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: Being Happy About a Green Door

I got back to L.A. on Tuesday night and everywhere I went there were mint-green doors:







which was a nice thing to have happen. It made me think of the "science student" scene in Don't Look Back, when the science student says something about deep friends and Bob Dylan's all "What's a deep friend?" and then asks if being deep friends means "you both are happy about a green door." Which is sooooo pretentious but always amuses me: I like Bob Dylan, I think. 

Anyway after recognizing my state of being happy about a green door, I had a fun realization. Mostly it has do with how, if this were last year or maybe any other year of my life up till now, I would have gotten all obsessed with trying to figure out "what it means, that there are mint-green doors everywhere." I used to have Owen-Wilson-in-Darjeeling Limited disease, or whatever disease Jason Segel has in the relatively underrated movie Jeff Who Lives at Home; I used to think everything had to mean something that was going to change my life and make everything wonderful. 

But the thing about mint-green doors is they don't mean anything. I went some cool places I wanted to go to, and there were some mint-green doors at those places, and I liked the mint-green doors, they were pretty. That's all. The freedom of being happy about a green door is cool and sweet and refreshing - i.e., the mint chocolate chip ice cream of developmental milestones.

I have four other Things this week, which are:

-this beautiful/heartbreaking Susan Straight essay from The Believer, about her kid brother who died young and loved Van Halen and had a Mexican fighting hen named Coco and was a citrus farmer. One of the paragraphs ends with these three sentences:

My ex-husband remembered that last week—"He never wore a shirt and he had blood all over him." Some drops of his blood are in the wood of the living-room windowsill. He must have been looking out to see when I would come home.

-the beautiful/heartbreaking book Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

-a glass of beer I had at home, which was apple beer with a cinnamon-dusted rim, a beer about Neil Young

-and of course Courtney Love's e-cigarette commercial:

Have a good weekend, guys!

JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: The Philly Accent/Philly Boy Roy



I've kept up with my obsessive listening of "Female Trouble" by Divine. I mostly listen to it on Spotify, where I starred it. I star what I like. The next "song" that comes up on my star list after Divine's is "Rock, Rot & Rule" by Scharpling & Wurster. I love them/The Best Show. You know that. As a result of the order of my star-list I've heard Tom Scharpling say, "uhh, do I have Ronald Klontile(sp?) on the line?", about 1,000 times in the last 2 weeks after "Female Trouble" ends. I usually stop it so I don't start listening to an hour long comedy phone call that is EXCELLENT over & over again. Last Friday I was like, you know what, it's been a while. I clicked on Scharpling & Wurster, and I picked Philly Boy Roy. Philly Boy Roy is really, really, really funny to me. So I was like, whatever, I'm at work, let's see what he's saying this time. Philly Boy Roy talks about the running of the cheesesteaks, his son Roy Jr tricking him into thinking they Freaky Friday style switched bods and also that Roy Jr. is a psychic, and he also talks about Laser Allin, a GG Allin Laser show he really wanted to go to. PBR's voice is an exaggerated/bizarre/maybe exactly right Philly accent. We're talking LONG O'S. That night at dinner I talked with pals extensively about the Philly Accent. I love regional accents. We all did the Philly Accent, which would sometimes devolve into a British Accent. Later in the week I realized/decided my cat Spock has a Philly Accent. Then! There was this article. I can only hope this isn't true, the accent is not declining. We need to save it & say "nem hoagies" a lot.