A Triumphant Return!

By Colby Marshall - February 2, 2016

A Triumphant Return!

(re: a shameful skulking onto the back porch under cover of darkness with tail between my legs)

You know how this story goes: girl meets blog in 2010ish.  Girl is devoted to blog and blog readers, posts without fail every day, 7 days a week.  Part of that dedication may or may not have had to do with a troll who predicted my downfall & dogged my every step waiting for me to fail, but hey!  We'll let by-gones be by-gones.  After all, this is a new beginning for all of us (Except you, Mailman! If you set one foot on this blog, heaven help me, I'll break out the lemons, and you'll never know what hit you!)

 Hee!!...Heh!...heh.  Good times.  As you can see, if you're new around here, there may be a few things to catch up on (Note to Self: For blog post soon, do ridiculous Reader's Digest version of a. "vital information" you might've missed and want to know if you're crazy enough to hang around here every now and then but aren't from the gang that caravaned over with me when I closed up shop over at Spittin and/or b. a refresher course for the casual Blog Clubber/sentimental nostalgia trip of beautiful memories for the one person who would take it this way/a case study in human behavior for the vaguely interested/a jumbled pile of nonsense that will serve as a reminder of all of the minutes of your life you'll never get back.  Actually, I think that last was b., c., d., and e., but I digress...). Yes. Reader's Digest catch-up as either in the style of a game of Pictionary,via a musical picture video montage, or as told by the several major television or movie characters from the 90's and today--i.e., me impersonating several major television or movie characters from the 90's and today.  Hm, which would you guys like to see most?  Do leave it in the comments, please!  Moving on!

But alas, I've returned, and I'm ready to make a go at regularly posting my deepest (Re: most frivolous), most meaningful (Re: Unintelligible) thoughts and experiences from my every day life in hope that they will enlighten & enrich you (Re: confuse & amuse you).  And just to get back into the swing of things, I'd like to kick off the return old school style with The Top Ten Things I Did While I Was Away from Blogging So Long!  (Yeah, yeah, I know.  Two of the things on that new blog banner up there kind of tell you all you need to know, but humor me, will you?  I'm out of practice!).  Without further ado, I present to you:

           The Top Things Things I Did While I

             Was Away from Blogging So Long!  

 

10.)   Preface this one with a reminder that about the time I dropped off, LOST ended.  You all know what happened, and thus, you know that night set off a chain of events, for there was work to be done.  For your safety and my own, I must keep the operational details confidential. Suffice it to say that very soon, the following list of items will mean much more to you : Rope, Bamboo shoots, and a copy of Walt Disney's Atlantis on DVD. A pair of pants with a book of matches in the back left pocket, nipple clamps, & a copy of Stephen King's Misery.

9.)  Spent approximately five months hiding under bed, afraid if I came out, one of Anthony Weiner's dick pics would jump out at me.

8.)  Sat in my bed in a confused stupor for a full five minutes when Ricky Martin came out as gay

7.)  To celebrate Katie Holmes & Tom Cruise's divorce and the fact that Katie was finally free, I arranged to release a pair of white doves atop a mountain. A pair of (figuratively) poor, traumatized, crazy-ass white doves.

6.)  After watching Miley Cyrus twerk and rub herself with a giant foam finger on the VMA's, I took a long, scorching hot shower, during which I attempted to scrub away a horror that could never be unseen.  Then, I spent almost seven hours on hold until finally, someone answered at Disney.  I yelled, "Told you Hannah Montana sucked!" and hung up.  Bet they'll never make that mistake again.

5.)  Secretly hinted at friends for months that no one had yet called me out to do the Ice Bucket Challenge. Wanted to see how long I'd get away with it.  Kind of got my feelings hurt when no one actually did.

4.)  Don't lie : You were in your kitchen dancing to "Gangnam Style," too!

3.)  Went on a two-month-long safari with hope I could manage one thing half of the American public drastically desired to do but failed at over and over again. After surviving the arctic temperatures of over fifty private boutiques, wandering into the path of an overzealous perfume sample spritzer, and downing about three bottles of Sunny D, I spotted it!  The elusive blue and black dress in its native habitat!  It spooked only once, as it had see a woman wearing a white and gold sweater go by, but in the end, I got a beautiful shot of this majestic, mysterious creature. 

2.)  To be quite honest, there at the end, I stayed in hiding.  I mean, Andy Weiner's dick pics are one thing.  Sure, they're scary when the pop out of your flip-phone like that little flower out of a clown's lapel, but after you get over that initial little squirt in your eye, you can kind of shrug it off and move on with your life.  BUT THEN, all of the sudden, EVERYTHING changed, and the world seemed to be in some sort of an alternate universe. 

Seriously: somehow in the blur of the five years with virtually nothing going on in my life except a new relationship getting engaged, getting married, having two babies, four book releases in the US, one in Germany, and another upcoming, I woke up one day and realized some really out-there stuff had happened. First of all, those guys that wrote South Park—that Comedy Central cartoon my mom didn't want me to watch even as an older kid because it was so crass and cussed a lot—had written a musical that was selling out every single show on the classy Great White Way (Side Note: That picture over there <---?  It's of me and my hubby with our friend Grey Henson, who stars as Elder McKinley in Broadway's Book of Mormon :-) ).  Everyone was so busy fighting over chicken nuggets and waffle fries that nobody noticed Amanda Bynes sitting in the corner trying to use Kim & Kanye's baby as a compass. This included the kid's parents, who were staring at the TV behind the counter, transfixed by some stupid movie where those kids from 90210 swing chain saws at a bunch of sharks that can fly!  

In addition to the downright chaotic, other things were a bit turned around from how I remembered them.  I thought Justin Bieber looked and sounded like my twelve year old female cousin, and Bruce Jenner was some friend of Andy Weiner's that got together with him at the Cape on long weekends for dick pic parties. More recently, though, Caitlyn was on the cover of Vanity Fair, and Justin strutted around Bora Bora as if issuing a silent warning to any sharks thinking of tornado-ing through that he had a built in baseball bat on him, and he wasn't afraid to use it! 

At some point, everyone ran around yelling, "YOLO!" in front of a Rainbow Colored White House.  Meanwhile, the episodes of Kids Say the Darndest Things and every Jell-o pudding commercial ever made got a whole lot more uncomfortable, as did Josh singing to Anna on their wedding episode of 19 Kids and Counting.   And the worst double blow of all the changes came when I heard a woman saying how sad it was Simon Cowell had left American Idol, and how it just wasn't as good since he left.  And I heard this right on the heals of learning Zane Malick was leaving One Direction.  Well, I sat down right there on the sidewalk, and I wept.  I wept for everything in this world that I thought I knew. 

A neighbor's kid came by, put his hand on my shoulder, and asked why I was crying.  I told him on the same day I'd just heard a woman say American Idol wasn't as good because Simon Cowell had left, I found out Zane is leaving One Direction.

"It just shows how out of touch I am," I said. 

The kid smiled, "Hey, Zane just left.  It's not like you're just now finding out Elvis died.

He was right.  It wasn't like that.  It was worse.  The knowledge that I couldn't pick Zane Malick or anyone from One Direction out of a lineup wasn't even the most depressing part...

It was finding out that there were people who actually still watched American Idol after Daughtry, Ace Young, and Kellie Pickler were all beat out by that gray-haired guy with the harmonica who, two days after he won, was never heard on the radio again.  Did I want to be in tune to a world like that?  Did I want to BLOG in a world like that?  Well, the answer is both the reason I came back, as well as why it took me another good year to do it...

The Number One Reason I Didn't Blog for So Long:

I spent every ounce of spare time between then and now watching this on repeat:

*Disclaimer: Yes, I know the years these events happens is grossly out of chronological order.  But I just found that when I tried listing everything in a logical, no-nonsense timeline, it made even less sense. I felt that by grouping together related items such as not-so-wholesome-after-all celebrity scandals, the complicated musical tastes of tweens and the middle-aged female population, and news items that involved penises, I would be doing...um...something.  Yeah, screw it.  There wasn't actually a good reason.  But wasn't that an impressive attempt at trying to pull one out of my rear end at the last minute?

Your turn- if you had just hibernated through the past five years, what news item, pop-culture phenomenon, or crazy trend from the past five years would you be most shocked by?  Would make you convinced your friends were punking you?  Make you want to move to Mars?