This reviewer left such a thoughtful review, I feel they understood my objective.
My book, "Craving Normal," available on Amazon.
Tag: 1970s
While promoting Craving Normal at the Brand Library in Glendale, I set up my books next to a tray of Twinkies. Below them, I put a sign saying, “Why Twinkies? Read the back of my book…” I did it as a “conversation starter.” I put that in quotes because the last time somebody used that term with me was when I asked my accountant why he had a silver streamer draped across his office door. His answer: “Conversation starter.” I nodded, and the conversation ended.
But yesterday, I got all kinds of talk when people inquired about my tray of Twinkies. Either they read the back of the book, or I told them, “Well, as a kid of health food freaks, I watched all the kids at school devouring Twinkies at lunch. So I craved them. That’s what I thought ‘normal’ kids with normal parents who lived in normal homes ate.”
A tall, older woman with a Boston accent came by and told me, “In the 1970s I used to give Twinkie tours.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, they were made in the same factory as Wonder Bread.”
She began her Twinkie tour spiel, pointing toward an invisible conveyor belt above her head. “And over here, the Twinkies are being filled.”
After she quit the job, she became a health food eater and never touched Twinkies. Oh, and she added this Twinkie fact. “Another woman I worked with, who used to give Twinkie tours, went on to become a Playboy playmate and then became a cop in Boston.”
I only contributed, “Wow.”
She looked down at my book. “I’d buy your book. Sounds interesting. But I’m 86 now and decided to stop buying things. Don’t want to leave my kids with a bunch of crap they don’t want.”
And the conversation ended.
My book is available! You can buy it here.
Last night, time warped and the earth tilted the second Marv didn’t heed Ian’s advice. It was the point of no return, when Rod Serling should’ve stepped in to warn us:
“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”
As Marv drives from the Valley on the 101, Ian says, “Whatever you do, Marv, don’t take the Highland exit.” Everyone knows the evening Hollywood Bowl traffic will suck you in, keep you trapped until it spits you out into Hollywood, forever altered – and not in a good way. But Marv doesn’t listen. He ignores Ian’s sage advice, drives onto the Highland exit and plunges us into the hellish pit of metal, glaring headlights and helpless drivers sitting in a mass-stupor.
But we don’t realize things are askew just yet.
“Doe a deer, a female deer…” Marv’s girlfriend, Lisa, and I, both sitting in the back seat, begin singing (after seeing the Hollywood Bowl billboard’s announcement of a Sound of Music sing-a-long), completely unaware we’re hurtling into another dimension, we naively continue singing more songs from Sound of Music, “High on a hill was a lonely goat herd… Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo…”
After an inconceivable amount of time–minutes? Hours? A few decades? Lisa’s car is spit from Highland out onto Sunset Boulevard. Craving Mexican food and thirsting for margaritas, we drive toward El Compadre. We pass the purple neon, blinking lights of the Seventh Veil and its “Live Nude Girls” and the Saharan motel.
Our starving foursome enters El Compadre. Musicians are playing mariachi music. People are smiling. They’re laughing and dipping crispy tortilla chips into chunky red salsa and swigging margaritas into their happy faces. We push through the joyous crowd. They all look so happy, with their chip-eating and margarita-swigging, we want to join them. But we’re told the wait could be an hour, so we decide to drive somewhere else.
It’s then we fall deeper into a dimension I never imagined would be possible to re-visit.
Like zombies, we drive down Melrose toward our destination. As if we don’t live in a city with a wide array of Mexican restaurants, as if we don’t have the power to make choices, we drive on. Nearing Paramount Studios, Marv tells stories of recording at Studio 55. We park across from where Studio 55 once existed. Closed for years now, it’s the reason we drove to Lucy’s El Adobe. It’s where Marv, Ian and lots of recording artists would go to grab a meal.
But that was back in the ‘70s.
“This is where Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt would have their tryst,” Marv says as he opens the door to Lucy’s.
We then walk into a room with gloppy amber colored lights stuck to dingy walls, walls littered with bad Mexican motif. On every other inch of the dingy walls are photos of celebrities in frames. I do a double-take. Is that Suzanne Sommers, as Chrissy Snow from Three’s Company, smiling down at me with a pony tail stuck to one side of her head?
While none of us seem impressed with the dated and slightly decrepit atmosphere, we try to find a table. One side of the room’s too dark. The other side’s glaring with light in one corner and dim in another. Unlike El Compadre, there’s no music, no joyous laughter. Some people are seated, but they don’t seem all that happy about it.
Yet we stay.
We’re seated in a room with a too bright TV in the corner, and a very long table of people who seem to have no where better to go. So we join them in their misery, and take our place at a faux-wood, Formica-topped table.
To my right, over Marv’s shoulder, I can’t take my eyes off the bad painting of former California Governor Jerry Brown, circa 1978. He’s in profile, and seems to have an eagle flying out of his nose. But I’m starving and thirsty, so I do my best to ignore it.
Marv mentions again, “Yeah, this is where Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt would have their tryst.”
“Marv, do you have some sort of quota to say the word tryst, tonight?” I ask.
Starving and thirsty, we still all manage to laugh.
Finally, a busboy brings us chips and salsa. The watery red salsa is accompanied by a sorry little wooden bowl (the size of a baby’s palm) with about sixteen chips sitting in it. Not great at math, even I calculated that’s only four chips per person.
We each take turns grabbing our first chip. I bite into mine. “Ewww. It’s cold and stale. And what’s with serving them in such a puny bowl? Haven’t they updated since the ‘70s? Don’t they know we now expect bucket sized drinks and huge baskets of chips?”
Lisa nods. Ian rolls his eyes. Marv quotes Woody Allen from Annie Hall: “Two elderly women are at a Catskill’s mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”
With scenes from Annie Hall drifting through my mind, I zone in on the teeny tortilla chip bowl and realize that the bowl is exactly the same type my mom had back when I was a kid… in the 1970s. I look up and stare at Jerry Brown and the eagle flying out of his nose. I shake my head. What decade are we in?
Now Lisa looks frustrated, staring at the tiny wooden bowl. “This isn’t right. The chips are gone, but we still have lots of salsa.”
We all nod. It’s wrong. But I think our waiter won’t be bringing us chips very soon, because he’s probably thinking “Hey, why should I give these people decent service? I cater to the hoity-toity elite, like Jerry Brown, Linda Ronstadt, Chrissy from Three’s Company, the kid from HR Puff-n-Stuff, the Breck Girl, Mr. Whipple from the Charmin toilet paper commercial…”
Finally, we get more stale chips. But now we’re out of salsa. It must’ve evaporated since the time the waiter last visited.
Lisa’s not happy. “Now we have chips, but no salsa.”
We all nod. This is very, very wrong. The chip to salsa ratio is completely askew. We’re in a bad cycle. The waiter may bring salsa, but then we’ll have no chips; then he might find time to bring chips, but then we’ll have no salsa. Lisa’s exactly right.
That’s when I have my epiphany: Of course the chip to salsa ratio is out of whack. The entire night is off-kilter!
Doesn’t everyone see? We’ve been plummeted back into 1978, when Jerry Brown was Governor! That explains the artwork and dated Hollywood “celebrities” on the walls.
We finally get our small (which are supposed to be large, but only according to a long gone era’s measurement), strangely perfumey margaritas. The below average tasting drinks just confirm my discovery of our time travel error. The only way this restaurant could still be opened in the present era of bigger, better, more choices and online restaurant review sites – it’s still 1978. There’s no other explanation for how this place could survive.
The waiter never brings the guacamole Marv ordered and my chicken mole enchiladas taste like they’re drenched in Nestle’s chocolate syrup.
Who else would accept food and service this bad? The only people who would return again and again to this place are people who’ve sat in gas lines due to the oil crisis, people who’ve worn polyester pant suits on a hot LA day, people who’ve hustled to disco music, people who laugh at Three’s Company and listen to their eight-track tapes of Abba and Captain and Tennille. These are the people who don’t complain when served sixteen stale tortillas chips. They don’t know any better. They don’t have online review sites like Yelp. Heck, the personal computer, for them, doesn’t even exist yet.
I keep this information to myself, that we’ve been hurled deep into the darkness of the disco-era doldrums.
Lisa thinks the only thing off-kilter is the chip to salsa ratio. I don’t want to panic her any further. Ian, Lisa and Marv only know the night is out of balance, and it all just feels wrong, as if something’s amiss… but they can’t figure out what.
We can’t wait to get out of this place. We debate what sort of tip to leave and then scamper out as quickly as possible.
As we drive back to the Valley, on the 101, Ian talks about the horrid service. Marv says, “Yeah, we only tipped them fifteen percent. Ha!”
“Yeah,” I say, “And when we tipped them we didn’t really feel like doing it. That’ll show ‘em!”
I laugh to cover my fear that we may never return to the year 2010, where people are served large baskets of tortilla chips, where little joyless crap-hole restaurants could never survive on their reputation from over thirty years ago.
I start to worry: will I go home and find someone’s Ford Pinto parked in my driveway? Will it be my home at all? Or will I have to revisit 8th grade in Northern California, wearing Ditto Jeans and smearing my lips with Bonne Bell strawberry gloss as I hum “Dream Weaver” to myself on my way to school… dreaming about my future? Please, no!!
As we hurtle toward the Valley on the 101, the four of us – as if one – begin chanting nonsense like we’re Yoko Ono quadrupled: Yoko Ono Ono Yoko…aaaaaaaahhhhh…. Uhhhhhhh…. It’s fun. It’s goofy. What are we doing? Are we purging the seventies from our systems?
Few people in the seventies would dare give Yoko the time of day after she (or so she was blamed) tore apart the Beatles. Maybe our homage to Yoko is re-altering the time warp continuum… getting us back into balance. We weren’t supposed to return to 1978. Just as we’re now not supposed to howl and squawk like Yoko. What sane people would want to do either? Are we sane? Well, that’s up for debate, but…
We drive up to Marv and Lisa’s house. Marv’s car is in his driveway, and it’s not an AMC Pacer! We’ve done it. We’ve come back to the future–to the present. Never again will Lisa have to suffer the outrage of chips without salsa, because we, the people of today, have learned to put chips in large baskets. We’re back to where computers have come far beyond Pong! Never again will I take our present day for granted. I’m done dabbling in time travel even if there was some great music back then and Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, John Travolta, and Linda Ronstadt were all hot.
Who knows, maybe I just hallucinated the entire time warp thing, got carried away with all the Jerry Brown art and musty Mexican motif.
Ian and I say goodbye to Lisa and Marv. We get in our car (What a relief! It’s not a Pinto!), and drive home. Excited to be back in my very own place, I run to my computer and get online to post a review of Lucy’s El Adobe. It’s succinct: “Just don’t!”
Standing behind me, as I type my last “!” is Rod Serling:
“If you think it’s possible to return to the past without any consequences, think again. Once it’s done, everything you know will go out of balance. This is the Twilight Zone.”
I gave myself the word prompt “pickle” and wrote this wacky, fictional thing: “That damned Peaches!”
I blame Peaches. If only Mom didn’t have to leave town for an emergency business trip. Because Dad–or as Mom called him, “That Damned Man!”–wasn’t around, Mom asked Uncle Dwayne if he could watch me. Her name for her brother Dwayne, “Drunken loser.” I was ten, so I told Mom I could take care of myself. I’d just heat up a Swanson frozen dinner, crawl in her warm waterbed and watch my favorite shows: “The Brady Bunch,” “The Partridge Family,” and even the show Mom hated, “Love, American Style.”
Mom rolled her eyes at me and dialed Uncle Dwayne.
A woman with a bubble of red hair opened Uncle Dwayne’s door. “You’re just darling! I’m Peaches!”
She pulled me so close I had to struggle to find air in her Jean Naté-doused cleavage. I knew that smell well from trying it at Woolworth’s and accidentally spilling the entire bottle. The stink made me gag. But I tried not to gag because that would be rude. She seemed nice.
Uncle Dwayne ignored me all night. But I liked Peaches. She taught me how to tease my hair the way she learned when she danced in Vegas. She agreed David Cassidy had amazing dimples and that it really would be great to ride in his colorful bus–but only with him and not with those other Partridges.
“If the bus is rockin’…” Peaches elbowed me and wiggled her eyebrows. “Know what I mean?”
I laughed. No, I didn’t.
In the morning, Peaches let me watch “Soul Train” on Uncle Dwayne’s TV, and she even poured me some coffee. I pretended I liked it, even if I didn’t. But I did like being treated like a grown-up. Mom always acted as if I would become crazed if I had a few sips of caffeine. How silly, I thought, as I drummed my fingers on the breakfast table and tried to stop my knees from shaking.
I needed something in my stomach. Peaches scoured Uncle Dwayne’s fridge to find something that resembled breakfast.
“Dwayne? Doncha got nothin’ in this ice box for the kid?” Peaches yelled, and then reached deep inside the refrigerator. Her butt, in pink polyester slacks, wriggled around as she dug inside. “Sardines, mustard, something green that shouldn’t be–I mean, really! What’re you a cave man?”
Peaches finally managed to scrape together my breakfast: a bowl of tutti-frutti ice cream. She said, “At least it’s got fruit.” So I ate that with some slices of pimento loaf on rye crackers and pickles. She also gave me Uncle Dwayne’s beer stein, his special engraved one that said “Brewski,” full of orange juice.
I lapped up a few spoonfuls of the tutti-frutti ice cream and nibbled a bit of pimento loaf. But those rye crackers smelled weird, sort of like the old guy in my apartment building who smokes a pipe and stares at me when I ride alone with him in the elevator.
Lucky for me, I liked pickles a lot. And I liked orange juice, too. Plus, I was super hungry. Crunch. Gulp. Crunch. Gulp. I alternated between the pickles and the juice. Until, suddenly, I felt the combination of orange juice acids and bitter coffee colliding and then revolting against the pickles I’d consumed. It was war–and my stomach was the battlefield. My insides churned and groaned. I tried for the bathroom, but…
“Damned kid!” is all Uncle Dwayne said to me the entire time I was there. And he only said that because I threw up all over the new orange shag rug in his den–the place he called his “magic spot,” where he spent his time watching football games, and where he hid out the whole time I stayed over. Now he was on his hands and knees picking out partial bits of pimentos, pickles, and tutti-frutti candied cherries from his luxurious deep shag.
Now, decades later, if I smell pickles I have to cover my mouth and run. And I always think about Peaches. Every time I go to the deli and make a big fuss about my sub sandwich, as in: “Excuse me! I told you I can’t have pickles!” I think of Peaches. Every time I get a burger and have to hold my breath as I return the tainted fast food, I think of Peaches. Every time I walk down the aisle in the grocery store that has pickles or pass the grocery deli and smell them, I think of Peaches.
It’s a tough life. Those cruel neighborhood deli employees avoid helping me and talk behind my back whenever I go to pick up a pound of turkey. It’s probably because I’m wearing noseplugs, but so what! Didn’t they see Elephant Man or Sybil? We’ve all got problems. Where’s their compassion?
Worst of all, it’s been nearly impossible to find a guy who will vow to never eat pickles. It’s a dating scenario I never saw portrayed on “Love, American Style”: My pickle problem. What I wouldn’t give to have normal dating issues–a date too talkative, too boring, too cheap. I don’t care, as long as he hates pickles.
My future husband can’t even eat them when I’m not around because I’ll smell them on his clothes, on his breath, from hundreds of feet away. Yes, I’ve tried every kind of therapy–hypno, group, and primal scream, just to name a few. Nothing works. I’ve even tried blinders like horses wear along with my nose plugs. But I can smell pickles from ten feet under chlorinated water. I swear, I smelled them while diving in the deep end at a pool party. A party I was invited to simply because the people didn’t know me well. If they only knew…my life is pickle hell!
That damned Peaches!
*I actually LOVE pickles. I have no idea where this came from. But this dancing lady looks pretty happy with her pickle-like dress.
Sex! Now that I have your attention… I will talk about that, but mostly this thought spew may only interest personal essay writers/readers, memoir writers/readers, editors/agents/publishers, English lit academics, parents of kids under 10, kids who feared the VD man (explained below), and my daughter, to whom I wrote a personal note. Anyone else is welcome to read, of course. See, I know you’re scrolling by, notice too many words to deal with on a Sunday morning, and wonder if you should wade in to check out this post, so I’m telling you: Scroll on by! (This made more sense when I posted it on Facebook.)
Here goes: Writing academics, publishing experts, English lit types have defined story as ALWAYS FICTION. Always. A nonfiction story is called a personal essay. It’s that simple. Final. But for the last fifteen years or so, I’ve read my STORIES at bookstores’ open mics. Nobody asked me to get up and spout my personal essay. I go to theaters to hear other storytellers, like The Moth from NYC, which is nationwide now. There’s a growing STORYteller movement. People get up and tell personal STORIES; they call themselves storytellers.
In my book, “Craving Normal,” here’s how I’ve been thinking of the pieces in my collection – Some are stories where I’m the protagonist. There’s a beginning; what my character wants; conflict as my character tries to get there, and resolution. An example of this is my story “Suicidal Santa.” Within the story I do mention what’s going on in my community and the world, to give context. But it’s not the focus.
Meanwhile, in my book, I do have personal essays, where I wrote commentary on societal subjects, with personal anecdotes. I am not the protagonist in a story. It has a thesis statement, ending in a personal anecdote to back it up.
For example, there’s “My Barbie the Slut,” where my focus is one subject: SEX, the message I, at nine years old, received about sex. Sex as filtered through my kid mind and how I perceived what I was being told via TV, movies, songs, books. I’d pluck books from my parents’ filled book shelves, read Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying,” and Michael Medved’s “What Really Happened to the Class of ’65?” Wow. Lots of teen sex (Hey, I thought those early 1960’s kids waited until they married?). My nine-year-old brain spun. Eye-opening! (I’d like to read that now as an adult.)
While adults thoughtfully gave me educational talks, those were in conflict with the messages all around me. So, in “My Barbie the Slut,” I storify my essay with my nine-year-old moments: beginning with my friend and me playing Barbies. Now, as often as I heard Helen Reddy sing “I am woman hear me roar,” and my mom gave me nice talks supporting women… Please! Barbie was all sex – big boobs, tiny waist, legs that could go behind her ears. AND! Accessorized with mini dresses and a sports car. That, plus the messages I got from movies: “Hi. Nice to meet you! Would you like to get naked and go to my bedroom? Or should I just tear your clothes off here in the doorway?” – no wonder I had my Barbie and Ken humping so hard, I scuffed their smooth plastic crotches.
Watch out, tangents ahead!
Parents of young kids – Be alert. Your kids sure are -> TV. Movies. Racy magazines found. Those nice talks adults gave me with healthy messages? Totally drowned out by the loud outside messages coming from a variety of sources. Hey, I was an observant little human (as most kids are). I paid more attention to the world around me than listen to lectures. Even though my parents limited my TV viewing, what little I saw I absorbed. I’d seen enough “Love, American Style,” episodes to dream of becoming a foxy stewardess with a guy in every city (Oh the conflict! Having to remember not to mix up boyfriends… flabby formulaic sitcom fodder). Hey, I was no dummy. I knew what Bob Eubanks on the “Newlywed Game” meant when he said “making whoopee.” His smirk gave part of it away. And then the way the contestants giggled and gushed, “Oh, Bob!” as they blushed, confirmed whoopee was about “It.”
IT. Doing IT if it feels good. Getting IT on. IT was piped into my head as if on a corporate Muzak loop. But do I want IT? When do I want IT? What if I don’t want IT?
And then cut to a commercial break for, say, Summer’s Eve. Those ads totally confused me. What in the world made these women so happy they would run through fields of wildflowers, huge smiles and flowing hair?
Even the choice of boogie monster we San Francisco State University student housing neighborhood latchkey kids feared made it clear how influenced we were by our sexually-charged era and society. We created scary neighborhood lore, the way other kids might say the most dilapidated house on the block is haunted. It started with the older teenage boys on our street. They told us about a naked man running through the eucalyptus groves near the handball courts of San Francisco State University. To enter the grove area we had to go through a hole in a chain link fence below a sign that said, in large red letters, “Danger!” So we appropriately called the land where The VD Man supposedly lurked, Danger.
NOTE TO MY DAUGHTER: If you read this, now you know why I was so on top of what movies and TV shows you watched, so much so that little you would ask, “Mommy, is this appropriate?” And why teenage you thought I was such a nagging bore. I know from my own experience being a kid, how messages are absorbed and how it’s confusing. Heck, soda and beer companies don’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars (or whatever it is) to advertise during the Superbowl because TV messages DON’T work. (Remember this if you become a parent. TV as a babysitter is like leaving your kid with a whacked out crackhead who also likes to sell you lots of pharmaceuticals and fear. Fear is a great manipulator. But it does sell drugs and insurance. Would you leave your kid with that crackhead?)
Anyway, my point is this: “Suicidal Santa” is in story form vs. “My Barbie the Slut,” which is societal commentary with personal anecdotes has some storyification, and what I call a personal essay.
Because I will be publishing under my own Exotica Gooch Publishing, I can do what I want. I will continue to blend my genres. *Exotica Gooch is my alter ego (There’s a story behind it, but I’ve yammered enough.)
If you got this far. Thank you.
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As a delusional and untalented child, I mangled many songs of the 1970s: Olivia Newton-John’s Have you Never Been Mellow; Minnie Riperton’s Loving You, and so many more, including (as I mention in this Los Angeles Daily News piece of mine) Debby Boone’s You Light up My Life.
Yes, it’s true. I sang out in public without shame. See this photo above? I’m dancing and singing, as I often did. And from the big hand gestures, I’m guessing the number I’m assaulting everyone in my vicinity with is Age of Aquarius.
And if I had more room in the Daily News piece, I would’ve included how I, as a Freshman (who should have known better by then), sang Linda Ronstadt’s Blue Bayou to my entire high school. Yep, it was just me singing a capella – standing in the middle of the auditorium during a school rally.
So, yes, I was truly delusional… I say in the past-tense, while typing about my life into cyberspace as if anyone gives a damn. Some things haven’t changed.
The dawning of the Age of Aquarius; yet my lack of talent did NOT dawn on me –
I did NOT sound like Linda –
Jug wine was to the 1970s what Scotch was to the 1950’s Rat Pack crowd; what Martinis were to 1960’s cocktail parties or what Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers were to the 1980s. Yep, jug wine is just as ’70s as mood rings, shag rugs and Pong. The combo just somehow went together – like Sonny & Cher, the Captain & Tennille, Shields and Yarnell… Okay, I think I’ve taken that whole thing too far, haven’t I? (*Don’t know what a mood ring is? See the 1970’s mood ring commercial, bottom of this post).
While going through slides for my book, “Craving Normal,” I discovered a theme in many photos from the ’70s involving my parents and their friends: the ever-present (or nearly always present) jug wine – there it was at house parties, diving days, beach outings, camping trips… and even at a kiddie party at the San Francisco zoo. No wonder whenever I see memories of the 1970s in my head, those bottles always seem to be clanking around there somewhere.
Hey, let’s play find the Jug O’ Wine (I guess the “wine” in each photo might give away the answers, huh?)
Maybe adults were trying to run away from home as this 1970’s Mateus ad reflects –
Mood rings –
Life experiences, one huge reason I devour memoirs and biographies. Again and again, I’m fascinated by what other people have gone through and how they use those experiences as they’ve grown. Did their bad experiences make them stronger? Or were their easy childhoods a detriment? An advantage?
Last night, I started reading Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please” – and, boy… can I relate. Middle school (or as it used to be called: Junior High) was brutal on my self-esteem. Mean girls and boys name calling and pointing out my flaws. Sad to read how much these little creeps hurt Amy. But look at her success!
In my book, “Craving Normal,” (available soon!) I share a story called “My Place in The Sun.” In it, I tell about the summer between 7th and 8th grade where I morphed from a chubby kid with a metal front tooth into a slimmer version of myself with a new white capped tooth. The boys who once made fun of me did a 180. Creeps!“When I returned to school for eighth grade, instead of my old husky-sized jeans and embroidered smock top, I wore Ditto pants that fit my butt just right and a purple satin baseball jacket. Now the boys who once teased me with “Michele Miles, I wish you were miles away,” and taunted me with “Michele, Michele, the Liberty Bell!” smiled and squeaked, “Hi, Michele,” which made me want to scream: “Hey, you idiots! I’m the same girl you teased only a few months ago!” But I ignored them and joined the cheerleading squad.”
Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please” on Amazon.
“Craving Normal,” my stories as a child growing up in the 1960s and beyond, will be available soon. Here’s my nearly complete book cover. Think I’ll keep “Enthusiastic quote goes here.”
“Craving Normal,” by Michele Miles Gardiner – back book cover text:
Living in a rock hut on a nude beach, staying in a religious commune,
facing an angry man with a gun, riding camels, hiding her freaky health
food lunches from lucky Twinkie eaters – Michele didn’t experience any
of this when her family lived in the suburbs of San Francisco. Then came
the counterculture revolution. Her entire life changed: Michele’s young
parents sold their home, bought a car and trailer over-seas and took her
and her little sister to explore the world.
We know a lot about the “flower children,” but what does an actual child
growing up in that era have to say? While many tales about that revolutionary time
are on record, few come from the perspective of the children who lived it.
This collection of stories are from one child’s perspective – tales of
becoming a young adult whose brain, and life, transformed from her early
experiences. Rebelling by cheer-leading, eating junk food, attending honor
roll parties, dreaming of being a foxy stewardess/actress? Lame, sure.
But how else does a child of young parents of the wild Sixties generation
rebel? By countering the counterculture.
Michele’s collection of stories – in which she rarely takes herself too
seriously – span from her earliest memories of the suburbs (her idea of
“normal”), through growing up trying to find a place where she fits in, once
again. Does she find it? Is Hollywood a sane place to search for normalcy?
“Craving Normal” trailer here: https://youtu.be/Z0M1BTXK20Q
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You can take the child out of the wild, but not the wild out of the child… apparently. This may explain many of my stories. When your brain is formed a certain way – on freedom, travel, adventure – makes it hard to be happy sitting in a cubicle, or locked up in school, following bells, rules and clocks. It’s a huge reason I’m self-employed. And why I’m still wild today.
Photo: Nude beach, Mykonos, Greece. I’m second from left; Little sister, far left, with beach friends.
I write about living in a rock hut on this nude beach in my book, “Craving Normal.” The story’s called, “That’s Not An Eel!”
