My “Weird Things” List: Part the 1st

Last night, as I sat down to watch Scrubs, something came on the screen that shocked me to my very core. No, it wasn’t Swayze’s free-swinging man junk again; it was something even MORE disturbing, if it’s even possible.

It was this.

So, it appears that the elusive “They” are making a live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (hereinafter referred to as TMNT) movie. Lawyerish already indicated that she was unaware of the existence of this movie, but what about the rest of you?! Did anyone else know about this?! Why was I not informed?

Seeing the above preview inspired me to do the popular “6 weird things about me” post, as it stirred up a memory of a particularly weird moment from the childhood of Li’l Metalia.

I’ve already done a similar "weird things" post, but dude. I think I have a pretty good sense of myself, and I (um, and probably you) therefore know that I have MUCH more than one post’s worth of me-related weirdness:

1. The Weird Art Thing: I have random Ninja Turtle-drawing skillz

Everyone on my mom’s side of my family is incredibly artistic. My grandmother makes things like this:

My mom makes things like the quilt displayed in the second photo here.

And me? Well, I can draw small, cartoony dog heads, which, upon reflection, do not resemble canines, so much as a puppy/elephant hybrids:

“I am not a monster!”

I shall call him Skippy...because I am eating peanut butter on apple slices as I type this. It’s just that scientific.

Anyway, over time, I’ve come to terms with the fact that the artistic gene skipped me.

However.

The summer of my 9^th year (that phrase is about as highbrow as this post will get), I fancied myself quite the artist. Clueless at this point as to my utter dearth of talent, I busied myself with many art projects. This in and of itself would not be so bad, but you see, I got cocky. I thought I could take my show on the road… and thus became a door-to-door t-shirt artist. I shit you not. Oh, and my business plan? Why, it went a little bit like this:

Approach door.

Ring bell.

Wait for poor unsuspecting soul to answer.

Hit them with my pitch, which basically consisted of me describing my skills with puffy paint, and then offering to puffy paint a t-shirt for the low low price of only $5.

I had no portfolio, or inventory, or any actual skills to speak of. Just some puffy paint and a pocket full of dreams. Do you want to die yet? No? Wait.

Somehow, miraculously, people occasionally said “okay.” And when they did, I’d draw the design on a little notepad I carried with me, and show it to them before beginning the “project.” Of course, I didn’t have any t-shirts on hand; no, part of my plan was for them to supply me with a t-shirt. Shockingly, no one really wanted to part with a shirt of any actual significance, and so I received quite a number of old, assy, and yellowed undershirts…which I would then paint.

Now THAT’s the part where you'll want to die. Or maybe that's just me.

It being 1989, one of my most popular designs was the Ninja Turtles. The request is not really surprising; they were seriously everywhere then, including, of course, on crunchabungas. (Naturally!) And I painted the hell out of those suckers.

(Side note: I’m almost certain that J, who works in intellectual property, is having a mini-stroke right now at the thought of me painting TMNT on t-shirts for cash without express written permission from the licensor. It’s like he’s a cop married to a drug dealer or something.)

As my gift to you, I am going to now draw one of my world, er, town uh...block famous Ninja Turtles, exactly as they appeared on the shirts.

Now, I know you're going to all want to flood me with offers to start up the business again, but please try to hold yourselves back. Next up:

2. The Weird Musical Thing: I’ve inadvertently and repeatedly sung about something that I’m pretty sure is illegal in some states.

The song “Disarm” by Smashing Pumpkins figured prominently in my life; in eighth grade, this song was hugely popular, and I adored it (still do). It always found its way onto my mix tapes, even well into my college years. One night in college, some friends and I had a drunken intelligent and well-planned evening at a karaoke bar. I have some old standbys that I usually perform, but that night, I decided to sing “Disarm.” After all, I reasoned, what better song to sing when you're past the point of being able to really see individual words anymore, than the one you know by heart?

I got up onstage and sang my intoxicated ass off. I started off okay, and then got to the line that I now know is “Inside of me, and such a part of you.” However, I had unfortunately been singing the lyrics wrong for years. Really wrong. Like, “Sodomy is such a part of you” wrong. In my haze, I saw the correct words scroll by, but it was too late—MY words were already out of my mouth.

Fortunately, I’m fairly certain that I was slurring my words, so no one knew the difference, but the fact remains that I did, in fact, sing to a barful of people about sodomy.

For that is, evidently, how I roll.

3. The Weird CrushThing: I have a secret crush on my governor

You know, it’s one thing if your governor looks like this:

(Oh, you lucky San Francisco girls….roooowwwwr!)

But we here in New York do not have a supercute governor; we have…this:

And yet? Huge unstoppable crush, right here. I can’t explain it, it just…is.

Please, send help.

***

Tomorrow (oh, who am I kidding…probably Thursday or Friday): I really don’t want to give it all away, but the second part of this list involves, among other things, the fact that I recently discovered a childhood friend is a hugely successful porn star.

Oops.

Well...you’ll still read that, right?