Random memory....

By the way, I'm blogging (yet again) from an Internet cafe, and there's an Indian katooey ("lady-boy") next to me whose lipstick is so thick that it has created a chunk on his/her straw. I absolutely cringe every time he/she takes a sip. His/her Coca-Cola must pretty much just taste like Boots cheap lipstick at this point.

I mentioned previously that I had been reading a book about ghost hunting, and the real-life ghost hunters visited the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which served as the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining.

While I was reading about the investigation of the (supposedly very haunted) hotel, a random memory flashed into my mind: I was living in Phoenix and we had all gone over to Max and Andrew's for our usual Saturday night gathering. After some drinks and some impossibly good snacks made by Andrew, a bunch of us gathered on the couch in front of the gigantic television, started watching The Shining, and enjoyed a good (and somewhat inebriated) scare.

When it came time for the very climactic scene where Jack Nicholson's character is chasing his wife and son through the creepy maze with an axe, we were all sitting on the edge of our seats, barely breathing. Max leans over and whispers, "Is she.....wearing a CARHARTT dress??!!"

For some reason, that was the funniest damn thing I had ever heard. Maybe it's because I grew up in Minnesota and surrounded myself with horse people, and Max had grown up in the mountains with hardy working folk, and we therefore both knew all-too-well the absolute non-sexiness of the Carhartt brand, but we both burst out laughing--that uncontrollable, insatiable laughter--and ruined the end of the movie for everyone. It became a random inside joke between Max and me, funny to no one else but us, and we even giggled about the Carhartt dress during my last visit to Phoenix, which was the last time I would ever see him.

And now I'm giggling about it all over again, and the Indian lady-boy is glaring at me through some ostentatious false lashes while she sips her lipstick-flavored Coke.

Life is strange.