You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning (16 page)

No, I couldn’t turn off the TV or, as another “greenie” suggested, cut back on the number of viewing hours. I was still healing from that writers’ strike which, being raised in the South, I didn’t even understand. Southerners don’t know a lot about unions. In fact, my entire education on the organized labor movement came from watching
Norma Rae
eleventy billion times. It’s why Paula Deen, Southern icon, had no idea that it wasn’t cool to cross a picket line at Smithfield Foods, which basically pays its workers in lottery tickets and honey buns. Poor Paula. All those loud agitators dressed as bacon strips yelling at her when all she wanted to do was sit around and talk with her irrationally handsome sons about the best way to tenderize gizzards. None of ’em would know a picket line from a picket fence, if you ask me.

The TV writers’ strike meant there was more reality TV clogging the airwaves than ever because they didn’t require real writers. There’s no need for witty banter because it’s all formulaic. Like how Heidi Klum bends over
and mutters “auf Wiedersehen” into the ear of whatever doomed
Project Runway
contestant has to pack up her knives and leave Trump Tower (sorry, they all run together in my head). I’m pretty sure that’s German for “Your designs suck rocks. No, really, they do.” But the contestants don’t speak German, natch, so they have no idea that this is something that Heidi and Seal will laugh about later while their many children clamber about them for yet another magazine photo op.

Here’s the thing: As long as it doesn’t involve turning off my TV, I want to be green because it seems like a cute, trendy thing to do but, let’s be honest, “sustainably harvested caviar” is expensive and I don’t really want a wind turbine in my backyard because it would clash with the big-as-shit blow-up swimming pool from Target that millions of tiny polypropylenes already gave their lives for.

I like my store-bought Dove soap and I don’t want to make my own by gathering and boiling horse chestnut flowers on account of
I’m not Amish.

And sure it’s sad that Americans toss twenty-five thousand
tons
of toothbrushes into landfills every year, but chewing bark and swishing with saltwater hasn’t worked since, like, Sacagawea.

My eco-geek friend named Mountain says I should be more concerned about the dangers of off-gassing, which is what happens when materials that are filled with volatile organic compounds release gaseous pollutants into the air.

“We breathe off-gases even when we sleep,” said Mountain,
while I had to wonder how she knew so much about my husband.

Mountain paused to pull a tube of beeswax lipstick made from cruelty-free hives in the Amazon from her $285 organic cotton shorts.

If I suggest a drugstore lipstick that would last a lot longer, she scowls at me as if I had personally tested “just peachy” on a caged baboon my own self.

Of course, even the most well-intentioned greenies have to realize that the movement has jumped the shark when ads encourage you to ditch your perfectly good old TV so you can buy a pricier one that’s “green” only because it’s trimmed in “renewable bamboo.” Nah, that’s not wasteful.

I’m sick to death of all the catalogs promoting “green” living-room furniture, “green” kitchenware, and “green” clothing. Guess where all your old shit goes when you go on that eco-shopping spree. That’s right. Mr. Landfill. See? I care about the planet. Just not when Carolina plays.

The only thing I find even less appealing than staycations and the eco-friendly obsession is running. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always rather admired runners for their dedication to the sport, rising early to jog for perhaps miles all in the name of improving their cardiovascular health and overall fitness.

My own precious duh-hubby is a runner, getting up in the dark every morning to gallop through our neighborhood
(which looks a lot like the
Thriller
video at that hour, now that I think about it), taking great care not to wake me on his way out the door.

Just as I detest camping, fitness isn’t high on the list, either. I prefer to watch physical exertion from a safe distance, say a nice outdoor café where I can smile encouragingly at passing triathlon participants whilst wiping chocolate croissant glaze off my mouth.

“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” runs in a cheerful little singsong loop inside my noggin, though I would be the first to admit this is born of laziness and sloth, and I know that Runners Are Better People.

I have several close friends who have run marathons, a word that is actually derived from two Swahili words:
mara
, which means “to die a horrible death,” and
thon
, which means “for a stupid T-shirt.” Look it up.

Marathon runners squirt little packets of brown gel into their mouths every few miles to give themselves a burst of protein. I’ll join them as soon as they can condense that to tiny little lasagna casseroles.

They speak of endorphins released and something called “runner’s high,” which just seems like so much trouble. Wouldn’t it be easier to just sit around and sip some yummy Firefly Sweet Tea-Flavored Vodka. (Talk about your marriages made in heaven, or, in the case of the Firefly brand, a little island near Charleston, South Carolina. Firefly works for me, and you don’t even sweat. Much.)

Nearly everyone I know runs, either in the morning or at night after work.

I know this because now that it gets dark earlier, I almost hit a few of them while trying to back my car out of the driveway. I wish they’d move.

But you know who I really admire? The Arizona jogger who I read about recently. She was attacked by a rabid fox and continued her run for another mile with the animal’s jaws
clamped onto her arm.
She told deputies that she was jogging along a favorite trail when a fox jumped out and bit her leg. So she calmly lifted up the fox by its neck and kept running with the varmint clinging to her arm.

Wearing that fox wrapped around her like it was one of those glassy-eyed fur stoles that elderly church ladies used to wear, the jogger was determined to take the fox with her and have it tested for rabies. She jogged the last mile back to her car, tossed the foamy fox into the trunk, and drove to the hospital.

Now I don’t know about y’all, but if I’m out for a jog and a rabid animal latches onto me, there will be no need for testing on account of
I will already have dropped dead
from the sheer horror of it all.

The world’s bravest woman had to start a series of rabies shots, and so did the poor animal control officer who got bit trying to get the varmint out of the car.

I believe we can all agree on one thing: Running can kill you. Pass the croissants.

Here, in honor of my friend Michelle, who just ran her first half marathon, is her favorite meal when she camps out. I prefer to cook it indoors like God and Kenmore by Sears intended. It’s a tried-and-true recipe that perfectly illustrates the curious Southern ability to create shockingly tasty meals with canned ingredients. I call it . . .

This is a nice way to sober up quickly if you have overindulged in the aforementioned Firefly vodka during the cocktail hour. Listen, y’all: Run, do not stagger, to your local likker store and ask if they’ve got Firefly yet. If not, demand that they look into it, and yesterday. This unspeakably delicious hooch is going to replace the mint julep as the Southerner’s “getcher drunk on” beverage of choice; just watch. Drink it on the rocks, if you’re brave, but I prefer it mixed with two parts spring water, lemonade, or orangeade. Garnish with mint or lemon and orange wedges if you’re feeling show-offy. Simply the best, I do declare.

• 1 can corn
  
• 1 can kidney beans
  
• 1 can black beans
  
• 1 can diced tomatoes
  
• 1 can refried beans
  
• 2 cups water
  
• 1 envelope ranch dressing mix
  
• 1 envelope taco seasoning
  

Don’t drain any of the canned stuff; just pour all the ingredients into a big pot and heat through. If you want to get “faincy,” you can garnish with shredded cheese and sour cream and serve it with a big ol’ bag of blue-corn tortilla chips.

When they asked me to participate in a
Dancing with the Stars
shag competition in Myrtle Beach, I was flattered but exceedingly nervous.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to those of you who haven’t ventured this far south, is the shag capital of the world, possibly the universe. If they shag on Neptune, we’d kick their two-headed asses, those of us who have danced on the red-and-white checkerboard floor of Studebaker’s, the holy shrine of the serious shagger. Shag, you see, is the official dance of the Carolinas. With its history rooted in jitterbug and jump blues, shag is always danced to R&B–flavored songs, with the legs and feet doing all the fancy moves. It’s spectacular to watch and terrifying to master.

That said, being asked to compete in a shag contest in Myrtle Beach is like being asked if you’d like to take a little
spin behind the wheel at Talladega or hang out on the balcony at the Vatican.

My bigheaded moment was short-lived, however, after I giddily told a girlfriend that I’d been asked to compete.

“You’re in
Dancing with the Stars?
” Pearl asked, acting way too surprised for my taste. “Which star do you get to dance with?”

“What? No! I’m the star!” I corrected her.

“Damn,” said Pearl. “They must’ve exhausted the B-, C-, and D-list celebs. Couldn’t they get Debby Boone or Tiffany or somebody?”

Come to think of it, Pearl and I really aren’t all that close.

It took a while for me to explain to Pearl that this wasn’t
the Dancing with the Stars
with Tom Bergeron and that pretty woman with the man-voice, but rather a charity fund-raiser with the same format. Still, the stakes were high because it was Myrtle Beach. This wasn’t some little talent contest at the Moose Lodge; this was the big leagues.

I would be paired with a champion shag dancer by the name of Brad, or as I prefer to call him, the most patient man on earth.

I was terrified but Brad, who had a wall full of trophies but didn’t act like it, put me at ease. He was sweet and kind and looked exactly like a grown-up Opie Taylor. We hit it off immediately.

I told Brad that I had never shagged in my life, which was incredibly embarrassing since I was raised just an hour from Carolina Beach, North Carolina, the true birthplace of shag.

Brad, ever the optimist, said he’d much rather work with a clean slate because “that way, there won’t be any bad habits ingrained.”

Not to worry there. My slate wasn’t just clean; it was boiled and bleached and shrink-wrapped. Brad had a huge task ahead of him.

It took about two minutes into our first lesson for me to realize that eighteen months of ballroom dance lessons with hubby weren’t going to help at all.

Shag is its own art form. You can’t compare it to anything else. Just because you’ve managed to learn a decent waltz, fox-trot, and rumba doesn’t mean anything.

Great shag dancers barely move their torsos throughout the dance; the real action is below the hips, with lots of convoluted kicks and impossible footwork.

Anywho, just learning the basic step took the entire first hour of our lessons. How did Jane Seymour learn to samba in five days? How did God make the world in seven?

I took back all those nasty things I’d said about Jerry Springer’s cha-cha. I was even ashamed of saying that woman had a man-voice.

For three months, Brad and I met once or twice a week in the finished room over his garage. We were joined by Sam Cooke, the Temptations, the Reverend Al Green, and Brad’s huge yellow lab dog, Jeb, who regarded my pitiful efforts with a baleful look punctuated by the occasional fart, which was pretty much the same reaction I expected from the judges.

Brad demonstrated classic shag moves like the “boogie walk,” where your legs go all noodley, and the pivot, a full-speed twirly thing that’s scarier than the words “President Jeb Bush.”

Because it’s actually a judged competition with me and a few other “stars” going for a trophy, I was plenty nervous and had already figured that if things got too bad, I could always faint like Marie Osmond.

Incidentally, if you’re talking about participating in a “shag” contest with someone from Great Britain, they might look at you funny because, as anyone who watched
Austin Powers
movies knows, that’s the word they use for doing the nasty. So you should try to avoid saying things like, “I told my husband that I was too tired for sex after I’d just spent two hours shagging with Brad in his garage.”

See? It just wouldn’t sound right.

After all that practice, Brad had come to realize that I would never, ever be able to master the boogie walk and a few other truly tricky maneuvers that would have wowed the judges. The pivot? Nailed it. But the rest of the moves were tougher’n woodpecker lips and I depended on Brad to distract the judges with fancy moves while I would just work the basic step and make sure I didn’t move my torso.

Driving down to Myrtle Beach on the afternoon of the contest’s date, I was nervous as a hen on a hot griddle. After weeks of listening and debating, Brad and I agreed that “our song” would be that fabulous classic, “Gone Fishin’ ” by General Johnson and the Chairmen of the Board. Brad was,
naturally, too kind to say it, but I knew that one reason he liked it was because it was relatively slow and mercifully brief.

I’ve danced to “Black Coffee in Bed” before and it’s the longest six minutes and twelve seconds of your life.

The good news was that I finally made an actual contribution to the choreography by adding a little twist at the end where I pretended to “reel” Brad toward me with an imaginary fishing pole and he boogie-walked toward me. We took to naming every step something special, and this one was “the crowd pleaser.” We might blow up like a squirrel in a microwave out there on the dance floor, but at least everybody would remember our reelin’-in finale. I hoped.