tribute to the girls of 79th

beth's house is breaking up.

after a mildly stressful rental search, mari and beth are headed east toward greenlake. they have found a beautiful new house (which i've yet to see) and fun new roommates. nora, a sometime-roommate, will be heading to california (or maybe colorado?) later this summer. and tomorrow, whitney (seen below in red socks) will be shipping her soccer skills south to california for good.

i thought i'd write a post to commemorate whitney's leaving or the disbandment of the house, but instead i'd like to share some advice from getgirls.com: "there's a rule about dating women with a roommate....this rule is that you must also make a good impression on her roommate."

this rule is general knowledge in the kingdom of men, and we don't need "the world's leading source for seducing women" to give us a head's up. still, i've heard (and seen) horror stories about guys and their girlfriends' girlfriends. for example, during the years right after college, i lived in a series of cramped, messy apartments--at one time, we squeezed three guys into a single nasty room--yet despite our ugly abodes, one of my roommates preferred to hang out with his s.o. at our place, not because it had some mystical appeal or because he loved us so much, but because of his relationship with her roommates.

in contrast, i'm a regular at beth's house on 79th; i genuinely like all of her roommates and consider them good friends.

during a recent work lunch, some friends and i chatted about dinners and executions; we pondered what we would eat for our last meal on death row--steaks & ribs, pizza & beer, exotic curries and a bottle of egon muller riesling--each listing was a more wonderful gluttony than the one before.

now, regardless of what we may think of california, it's probably a bit ridiculous (and morbid) to venture any kind of comparison between whitney's last meal as a washingtonian and the smörgåsbord of delicacies my work friends dreamed up for a final night in the joint. but forgive me, i can't resist. indeed, i find it rather interesting that we ate sadza, a simple shona food that mari imported from zimbabwe. sadza tastes great, but it's rather simple; it doesn't set the taste buds on fire or make the stomach purr, and i would be a little surprised if it were whitney's favorite food.

but sadza ignites community.

the kitchen crowds as people gather to help prepare the meal. someone grabs a great pot and dumps pound after pound of corn meal inside. the pot is large, they say, because you never make just a little sadza. and when it's ready, the main dish is a finger food, the ultimate evolution of the potluck. grubby fingers go at it, glopping the sadza in delicious tomatoey-onion sauce; everyone is united in their forklessness.***

yes, sadza is a fitting end to the era. beth, mari, nora, and whitney's decision to prepare sadza seems emblematic of their heart for community (also see this post from 2005), of their friendly openness to people like me. and this sadza approach to life worked.

indeed, it has inspired phrases that you'd see in yearbook scribblings: fun parties (which i used to consider an oxymoron), caroling, talking about guys (errrrrrr...perhaps i mean listening to talk about guys), taking trips, eating too many vegetables, performing sufjan, watching lost....

you know, getgirls.com is right: it pays to be friends with your girlfriend's roommates.

addendum

i was also hoping to say some words about whitney. i think we'll all miss whitney's honesty, her enthusiasm, her encouragement, her funny mannerisms, and her devotion to her friends, and we know she'll settle in well down in cali.

(the links are to other posts about whitney and to other posts with whitney pictures).


the s.o. "soccer skillz" seattle, wa. [PS these are very, very closely cropped pictures; thus the poor quality]

***well, almost everyone. as much as i love this metaphor, there are those that choose to wield silverware, and they don't spoil the community by doing so. some may think them stubborn or contentious, but really they're just adding their personal flare to the event.****

****in case you couldn't tell, i eat sadza with a spoon.


please comment if you have other thoughts or yearbook-like comments on the girls of 79th or whitney.

big events in the real world

for once i feel legitimately vindicated in my 17 point scale absence. since we last spoke, my world has exploded. by world, i mean my friends, my teams, and myself, and by explode, i mean that the last two weeks have been crazy ridiculous.

my friends

1. alex got married and headed off on his honeymoon
2. sean finally left on his honeymoon
   
3. my roommate got laid off
   
4. beth and her roommates got a tentative eviction notice
5. the other andrew and some of beth's roommates (i.e., whitney and nora) confirmed that they were beginning new life adventures in sunny california while others (i.e., joel & sara, mari, my parents) set off or prepared to set off for trips to china
   

my teams

1. the sonics drafted kevin durant and jeff green and signed wally szcerbiak, delonte west, general manager sam presti, and coach pj carlesimo
2. the sonics traded ray allen and rashard lewis
3. the muckleshoot indian tribe is considering the possibility of the construction of a new sonics arena
   
4. the mariners are still winning, and at 50-36 are only 2 games out of 1st place in the west and 1 game out of 1st place in the wild card race
5. after jj putz and ichiro, a pair of sports bloggers may be the leading MVPs for the mariners this year; perhaps i'll explain more later
   
6. the others, my amazing soccer team, are 0-3 with an ever climbing goal differential and potential for success

myself

1. i finished the text for the first issue of that silly newsletter that i mentioned a few months; i'll post a link when it's all fine and dandified
2. i spent the last week or so in ocean shores with the s.o., her family, and my family; it was the first meeting of the two clans
3. i have a new job! i am the assistant creative writing editor for the other journal; i'll explain more later
   

if life slows down and gets ordinary again, i'll be sure to visit more frequently.

andrew david. "the wize young iguana listens patiently to andrew's list" san ignacio town, belize.

sufjan stevens cover

i'm a world famous musician! my band just aired our music video for sufjan stevens's "chicago" on youtube. i'm the fellow on secondo piano and occasional background vocals.



(if you press play and the video appears to be slow or perpetually loading, click the youtube logo in the right-hand corner of the video screen and follow it to the youtube site. also, be sure to take part in the first ever 17 point scale poll--see the side bar--and leave poll-related comments here on this post.)

when getting in the head of a female...

i've had a lot of people ask me whether yesterday's post really happened (well, more than one person, anyway). and, yes, it did. i invented the old lady, urns, and pink slippers, but the basic storyline was conceived in the brick and mortar of the real world.

if time grew on trees (like money, leaves, and squirrels), it might be interesting to see whether my future elaborations of whitney's story got closer and closer to the truth or whether they drifted off in an entirely new direction, an entirely different kind of truth. i'm not sure which would be best, but either way, i still think that i'd struggle with writing as a female narrator. however, my brief encounter with SPU's writer types may have offered some encouragment (should i ever choose this unusual path) and affirmed my earlier writing strategy.

one afternoon, as the MFA students salt-and-peppered the room with their writerly epiphanies, mark explained that he'd had a breakthrough in writing his female character. he'd struggled for months trying to make her seem more natural: he'd made her obsessed with alcohol, sex, and sewing fabrics*, but nothing seemed to work. then one day he tried something counterintuitive: he decided to write her as himself, as mark the lumbering tall guy, just without the lumbering tall guy part. and it worked!

then, during an art and faith lecture, the MFAers tossed about martin buber's idea of writing as the other. they discussed the interconnected mirror-like relationship between the self and other seemingly foreign characters. now, all of a sudden, i'm starting to feel like a writer--i broached that very issue several posts ago! weird....

andrew david. "writer's block" greenwood, wa.

*i can't remember the third item that mark named, so i made this one up. it was definitely something less unisex than beer and sex. something like sewing fabrics.

the crime

as you can probably tell, i didn't get a chance to craft that short story that i'd been planning (and also mentioned here) before i left to visit the SPU MFA students at camp casey, and now that i've been humbled by their brilliance, i'm afraid that the best i can do for this first-person narrative is a basic plot outline:

the main character starts by nervously introducing herself as whitney, a nordic do-gooder with rather central american tastes. we get the sense that she doesn't really want to be here, narrating her story to a thousand invisible cyberfaces.

(although, i'm not really sure how this hesitation would be communicated to readers; after all, unless she breaks the illusion that this is a story and directly addresses the crowd, how are we to know that this whitney is uncomfortable in the spotlight. still, it's a necessary bit of foreshadowing, so a solution must be found.)

she then sets the scene in the cosmetic aisle of the community drug store. a wild looking man in a trench coat and fuzzy pink slippers approaches her and asks for shopping tips. he speaks out of the side of his mouth and smells like alcohol. he seems desperate. the elderly woman who was camped out at the table of free estee lauder samples flees, but whitney considers the alarm bells in her head and can't help but assist the man as he shops for his two girlfriends. if i weren't so clueless about cosmetics, i might mention all of the product types that he tosses in his cart, but perhaps it's sufficient to mention that whitney is surprised by the breadth and volume of the man's generosity.

the story climaxes a few minutes later as whitney finishes her shopping and joins the man in line. his lips twitch as he approaches the clerk and announces, "that this is a robbery."

sure enough, the man appears to have a gun or a convincing ketchup bottle in the left front pocket of his scrappy corduroys. as whitney tells the tale, she spreads the tension on thick. thoughts of violence fill her mind. she peels her attention away from the man and the emptying till long enough observe other customers: a nine-year old tugging insistently at his mother's jeans and estee lauder lady peeking from behind a stack of holiday urns.

and then the man is gone and the police arrive. she then learns that some of the employees think that whitney is an accomplice. at this point, my notion of the story grows cloudy. if i'm writing creative nonfiction, she tells her story to the officer, runs through the store to repurchase her goods (the man took them with his perfume), and has trouble sleeping the next night. if i'm a fiction writer, she is arrested for the man's crime. or better yet, perhaps it's all a rouse and she turns out to be a real-life accomplice.

well, i suppose it doesn't matter much: there is no story, just an outline.

(but there is an afterword!)

espn. "andrew's bracket as of sunday night."

a gift for whitney

for her birthday, i promised to give beth's roommate, whitney, a picture from mexico. we looked over some of my photos together, but she wanted me to make the final decision. i thought this would be a great picture for her room -- whitney really likes both beth and i. when i have some time, i'll make beth and i a separate photoshop layer, lighten us up, and send this baby to the printer. whitney will be speechless. because the picture is for whitney, i recently removed it from the website. if you want to ask her for it, here is the citation: angela boyd. "andrew's most romantic moment in mexico" puerto vallarta, mexico.