PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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5 Nov 2013

Le New Loo.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Work | 5

I’m renovating my master bathroom.

“Master bathroom” sounds awfully fancy, like there’s room for a helicopter pad in there. I assure you there is only room for a sink, a shower, and a loo. And a towel rack. But it’s my sink, shower, loo, and towel rack and dammit, I deserve to enjoy them all while standing on tile that isn’t cracked. When I got my condo, both bathrooms were clearly quick fix, Home-Depot’s-havin-a-sale, let’s-move-this-unit jobbies, and a few months back I decided it was high time I do something about it. The cabinet under the sink is (was) this icky laminate and over time, the sprays, soaps, and powders from my morning toilette took their toll. ‘Twas getting a bit sticky, you see, and no amount of 409 could help it.

The bathroom is’a gonna be’a sweet. The sink is getting downsized. The shower is getting upsized. The tile will be custom; small white squares with an inlaid black Greek key thingy that will run from the floor into the shower and back. And I’m wallpapering, which might sound cray, but it can be done with the proper treatment. The zebras up there? That’s my wallpaper. It’s made by a company called Scalamandre and that’s half the reason I like it. I say it all the time with lusty flair when I walk past the sample tacked to the wall: “ScalaMANDRE!” and I gesture like an Italian.*

The work has begun and boy is it weird have three big, sweaty dudes in my house. I notice it most at lunchtime when they bring out their sandwiches and cans of pop. They all sit down on buckets in the cordoned off portion of the main room and they’re just in there, munching and talking about the game, the girl, or the government. I work at home, but we’ll see if that will remain to be true. I may have to do a coffee shop tour of Chicago for awhile; when they start cutting tile, I might start biting my nails. Which certainly won’t do. I have to save those. I have to save them because as soon as they finish the bathroom?

The kitchen reno starts.

*That is a ridiculous thing to say.

5 Nov 2013

Ten Reasons To Visit The Chicago Symphony Orchestra

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Chicago, Day In The Life, Tips | 6

DUDE!!!! This photograph was taken by one Mauricio Mejia. My compliments to you, sir.

My friend Yuri had a birthday this weekend. I told him I’d take him out. Sometimes, you need to do something nice for someone and really take it to the moon. Everything was a surprise, and we started at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a concert.

I now present Ten Reasons To Visit The Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a concert the next time you’re in town. If you already live within a 25 mile radius of the CSO and have never been or haven’t been in a long time, for heaven’s sake, what is wrong with you?? Pardon me, but down that sandwich, finish reading this, and then click over. You will thank me — not that that’s why I’m doing this.

Let’s do this!

1. Tuxedos. Not on you, necessarily. But on the dudes. Hot.

2. Concessions for sale before the show and during intermission include sparkling wine, good chocolate, and cheese doodles.

3. There’s a big floating thing above the symphony stage that looks like a UFO made of lace, light, air, and wire. It’s my favorite thing in the whole theater. Research reveals that it’s referred to as “the artwork” and its job is to bounce and distribute sound from the stage out to the audience. Fact: the crispy white wires and pale green glass “artwork” weight seven tons. Seven tons!

4. My friend Charlie plays the trombone! Hi, Charlie! You killed it the other night! Way to go, buddy! I waved to you and got in trouble!

5. Hey, man. Take a nap.

6. It’s freaking hilarious to listen to all the coughing in between the movements. People wait…wait…wait to hack up a lung until the sonata is done or whatever and then its just “COUGH! COUGH! HACK! HACK! BRAAHHH! HORK! HORKHORKHORK!” and then the music starts again and everyone falls silent. Very entertaining.

7. There’s always someone who is clearly either a musician or wannabe musician who wants everyone to know they know the music backward and forward, so they make these funny faces and roll their eyes back in their head and wiggle their finger in time and shake their head like they’re in exquisite pain at moments in the score. You can make them feel good by giving them a nod and a smile when they catch your eye. They will try because they want to feel like an expert. It’s okay, we all do that kind of thing in some way.

8. Fancy.

9. You can go to a crappy bar afterward and balance out. It’s a big world. You can do the symphony and a crappy bar in one night. That’s not just something people do only in the movies.

10. Your symphony is the same symphony everyone else gets, if you want it. Cheap balcony seats? Same symphony as the season ticket holders. Half those people are asleep anyway or thinking about their condo in Sarasota. You go get your experience and you put it in your heart and keep it, you hear me?

You hear that?

Listen.

4 Nov 2013

Word Nerd: Boo

by Mary Fons | posted in: Word Nerd | 1

Blame it on Halloween last week: I got “boo” on the brain. Not the go-to ghost word “Boo!” but the slang term for a quasi-girlfriend/boyfriend, as in “I love my boo” or “It’s just me and my boo.“ I think boo is the best thing to happen to the English language since chortle.**

Doing research on the Internet is great and all, but from time to time it reveals its limitations. To truly get to the bottom of the etymology of boo, I would need to speak to a linguistics professor or a cultural anthropologist — the web didn’t help much. I found the following possibilities for the existence of boo:

– it’s from the French beau (pronounced “bo”) meaning “boyfriend or male admirer,” which found its way into Afro-Caribbean language through French colonization
– it’s a Southern-bred, derivative term of endearment, lineage going something like this:
poppet –> poopsie –> boopsie –> boo
– it’s just short for “booty”

Who can say? Well, Yahoo question boards can try (boy do they) but I’m not sure about any of these answers and that last one is straight up dubious. I feel confident that boo is a word born in black culture, though. The first time I ever heard it used was in that song “Dilemma,” by Nelly and former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland. The chorus went: No matter what I do/All I think about is you/Even when I’m with my boo/You know I’m crazy over you. Tsk-tsk, children. But until I meet a cultural anthropologist at a cocktail party whose studies include American Ebonics, it could be a long time before I know the true origins. I can still love the word, though, and I sure do.

I love boo because it names a real thing and it’s phonetically perfect for what that thing is. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I have a boo. You and I are having lunch and you ask me what I did over the weekend. I say, “It was me and my boo, just hanging out.” You could infer that my boo was male, because I am straight. You would know that this fellow is involved with me romantically, but you also know I don’t have a boyfriend. So is this person just a random, um, date? (We’re speaking hypothetically, remember.) No, boo implies a tenderness and a familiarity that elevates the subject into something more special than a frivolous fling. I mean, I wanted to hang out with him all weekend, so he must be worth hanging out with.

So I like the word because there do exist these kinds of relationships in the world: something not official, but not pointless. Something important, but not call-your-mother about it. My boo, my boo, my boo.

And then there’s the darlingness of it, the baby-like sound that the word is. It’s close to “goo,” as in “goo-goo, ga-ga” and close to “baby” and it’s also slang, which means you feel pretty street when you say it. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t respond positively if their partner, spouse, lover, etc., affectionately put their arm around them, pulled them close, and said, “Hey, boo.”

Try it. Don’t try it on someone you don’t have genuinely tender, romantic feelings toward, though, because it would be way too familiar. Kinda like calling your 60-year-old Spanish teacher in high school “senorita,” it just makes everyone a little antsy. And to all the boos who had good weekends together, hats off to you.

(But put your pants back on.)

** The word “chortle” did not exist in the English language before Lewis Carroll wrote Jabberwocky in 1871. A hybrid of “chuckle” and “snort,” it is but one of almost two dozen entirely new words introduced in that legendary poem. Now that’s a writer who can write. Check it out.

2 Nov 2013

The Pendennis Observer.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life | 5

Histories never have sequels. Think about it.

I have a sock monkey.

Lots of adult people “have” sock monkeys, but their monkeys are mostly in tupperware bins with the rest of the stuffed animals and toys they chose to kept from childhood. Those monkeys are not in rotation. Mine is.

My monkey’s name is Pendennis. It’s true that Pendennis is a novel written in the mid-19th century by William Makepeace Thackeray, but that book has no bearing whatsoever on why my monkey’s name is Pendennis. I haven’t the faintest idea why I named the lil’ sh-t Pendennis but when I received him as a gift in high school (?) that’s just what I did.

I take pictures of Pendennis all the time. All the time! Almost every day. He is a veritable font of joy and he does nothing but lie there — he’s incredible. His goofy little body is so funny and is weighted just so with stuffing that whether he’s been tossed to the ground when I’m making the bed, or maybe he’s tangled up in the covers, or he’s been whipped into a chair for some reason, his gesture is priceless. Every time. And it’s crucial to understand that I do not pose him. The pictures I take of him are never styled. I just choose my angle and shoot. Look:

Pictured: Pendennis — Pendennis is pinned.

Pendennis in, "SHAME, The Rock Opera." — Pendennis in, “SHAME, The Rock Opera.”

I’ve registered a domain name: PendennisObserver.com. One day, when I’m not so busy, I want to put a simple site up and post at least one picture each week of my monkey. Surely someone else in the world thinks he’s as funny as I do. The website would have a tag line, too, something like: “Never posed, never duplicated. The Pendennis Observer. Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur.”

That Latin part? Translation: “That man is wise who talks little.”

30 Oct 2013

Boo Who?

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art | 4

Until tonight, I had not seen a scary movie in fourteen years. Fact!

The last one I saw was The Blair Witch Project in 1999. I was with my friend Sarah in this huge, crumbling old theater in Minneapolis in the middle of the summer. Halfway through the movie the air conditioning broke, which meant you had a packed auditorium of terrified, sweaty people watching a movie that takes place in the freezing cold. It was surreal. It was also scary, because that movie is hella scary — or it was, before the whole controversy about the movie being [REDACTED] went viral, which in case you didn’t know, children, was before anyone really called that “going viral.” Back then, it was just memes and land lines for most of us. Word still got around.

But see, I don’t like scary movies. Life is horrifying enough on its own. It’s incredible to me that perfectly sane, healthy people pay money to see scenes of fake murder and mayhem. However, my younger sister loves scary movies and she’s got a good reason for everything she does, so when she asked me if I wanted to go to a showing of the original Halloween tonight, I said no but then I said yes. She almost fell over.

“Scary movies are so goooood!” she texted me. “Not gross ones like Hostel or Saw, but like, truly classic scary movies are the best and this one is tops.”

Not knowing the ins and outs of the genre and with only a perspire-y viewing of Blair Witch* under my belt, you don’t have to take my word for it, but man Halloween is good. The movie came out in freaking 1978 which makes it older than me: there’s a reason we’re still able to watch it on the big screen once a year. The only person on earth affected by a Halloween spoiler would have been me until last night, so I’ll go ahead and say it: the fact the first death doesn’t happen until there’s a half-hour left in the film is crazy awesome! It’s good filmmaking.

After the movie, I walked home in the rain. I looked behind me a couple times, but mostly I just felt glad to be alive.

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