My Time As A Groupie

Groupies historically have been given a bad rap.  Anyone who has watched Cameron Crowe’s masterpiece film Almost Famous knows that rock music back in the seventies also had a semi-groupie “group” called the “band-aides,” all who were women who just loved music and wanted to hang out with rock bands, so they could be there to inspire and be inspired.

Haven Kimmel, (Pictured above & center) a wonderful woman, great author and memoirist has her own little group of modern-day Band-Aides called Blog Babies.  I am one of those blog babies.  We are all just alike, and yet completely different.  Book nerds to the core, we all love to read and are eager to get close to the writers who challenge our brains to dream, think and create.  We are one great big dysfunctional family, and perhaps not so coincidentally, most us of have grown up this way as well.  Some of us want to be writers, and some of us are actual writers, but just like the famous Penny Lane, we are all just there for the music writing.

I first heard of Haven Kimmel when her book A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana was first reviewed by EW magazine.  I knew right away it was the type of book I needed to read, as I love nothing more than a memoir.  Several years went by and I still kept seeing it at Borders.  I always picked it up off the shelf, but put it back, mostly because I had a hard time affording books.  And I was mostly buying the classic literature first.  A book was a rare treat for me and until I married, I had every book from childhood on up that was ever bought or purchased by me.  Books were a rare indulgence, especially in the mid 2000′s, as I was still dirt poor and living two blocks off of 8 Mile Road.

Spring of 2008 brought Zippy back into my life, and I finally grabbed it and gobbled it up in one take on a sunny afternoon in the park.  I was crying and laughing all at once.  Zippy was me, but only five years older, and raised as a Quaker rather than a Catholic like me.  Sure, we had many different paths and challenges, but we were the same spunky child who faced mice, mischief, and crazy neighbors who hated us.  I needed to find everything this woman wrote.  Seriously, if you want to read a good book, then you need to read Zippy.

Months later I learned that another of my favorite authors, Augusten Burroughs, was this womans BFF.  I had a minor heart attack, because he was the first memoirist who I ever read and said to myself, “Oh my god, he had a worse childhood than I did.“  I do not say that about many people.  Augusten, if you are not familiar with his work, has written six memoirs about his life.  Six.  All are absolutely fascinating.  Running With Scissors even was a movie!  Come on, two people in our world are this talented and they are friends?  I visited their websites, then their blogs when I was just a few month old blogger.  And I found fun, good writing, and intelligent readers.  Who knew real authors blogged interesting things in their spare time?  As if they even had time for blogging.  So I commented on Haven’s blog.  And a while later I commented again.  People were saying things there much more interesting than I talk about in my real life.  And, a few months later, there it was, in my inbox, an email from Haven Kimmel herself.  I screamed a bit in the public library from the craziness of it.  What could she possibly have to say to me?  A silly midwestern blogger with a dream to finish her own memoir?  I even wrote a post about it which you can read here.

So, a new blog baby was born that day.  Haven has been kind enough to send the occasional email, and has even shipped me an autographed copy (On her dime) of her novel The Used World.  Just like another blog baby whose name won’t be mentioned, I still have the envelope with her home address on it, which I, unlike said blog baby did not google earth.

A few months ago the babies began talking about meeting up for a reading that Haven was doing along with Augusten.  I wanted to go, but figured that sounded too crazy.  I’ve only been to one book reading in my life, Douglas Adams, and it was fun.  I couldn’t imagine how cool it would have been to see two of my favorites together.  I decided pretty late that I needed to go, not only to meet them, and not only to meet the other twenty or so other blog babies, but for me.  I need inspiration, I need intellectual stimulation.  I basically interact with dumb people and tell them no for a living all day long.  I’m in constant pain, and not just physically.  I try to blog about health or religion or other certain high brow things on here and hardly anyone responds or reads it … and it breaks my heart.  Hell, some of my own very good friends refuse to even come here to take a look more than once.  I spend hours on good posts and I’ll get like two comments.  Dumb reality tv show posts on Jon & Kate Plus 8  have over 1,000 comments.  You can see that my blog, while fun and entertaining, isn’t as educational to me as I hoped it would be.  Breaks my heart.

But, I digress.  I flew to Durham, N. Carolina last Wednesday to stay in a fancy ass hotel with a bunch of other people I’d never met.  (My own room, complete with a king bed, or course!) All I had was one carry one, four books, and a hope and a dream of saying hello to a writer I adore.  Sounded crazy, and it was hard to explain to people why I was going on vacation without my husband.  But I went, and I met, and I met.  I kept saying in my head, ok, now I can die happy.  (I am dramatically referring to my Dysautonomia, which may kill me someday.  This is the reason why I’m going to the Mayo Clinic next week, in the hopes to learn what kind and why I have it.)  People who I only knew from talking to on Haven’s blog gave me works of art they made themselves (Sher, you artist, you rock!) or art and books and a bound book they made of all of our book recommendations from months of blog talk (Caryl, you are so crazy!) or bon bons (Kate, I need that recipe) and beads and  so on and so on.  Women I never met shuttled me around town three days straight.  Who does this and feels totally secure that not a one of them wanted to chop me up into little pieces?  I’m terribly afraid of stalkers and serial killers.

Most exciting about my days in Durham was that Haven and her hot husband came to meet us for an evening in the hotel.  Even better, she invited us back to her house and we got a tour and a look into her barn, where she writes.   (Also a peak at her hubby in a sleveless t-shirt, mmm…)  I told her she was a lucky lady and we had a nice laugh about it.

It was thrilling, full of taxidermy, photos, art, and various gifts from her babies and even miniatures of everything you can think of, including all of her books.  The next night was another evening of fun when we got to meet more blog babies and I got to sit front and center as she was kind enough to have the theatre rope off twenty-five or so seats for her fans.  Then they let me come in early to put up the signs.  Who does that?  We all heard her and Augusten read together on stage at the Carolina Theatre.  But it wasn’t a typical reading, more like an evening of fun with two hysterically funny people who obviously adore one another.  I got to speak to both Haven and Augusten (Or HAGUSTEN as I’ve named them)

It was so cool and scary.    I felt so bad that we blog babies kept them there until 10:30 or so.  But we were just so in awe and happy to have met them.  As you can see I forced them to take a picture with me and had to tell Augusten to squeeze me in to make me look skinnier.  I have my moments of boldness.  I’m not thrilled with the cheeseburger face that I had to hide via photoshop, but my BFF Ange says she hasn’t seen me smile like this in a while, so I’m trying to ignore the fact that I look like The Cheeseburgler in it.

I wrote this to while I was still in Durham at my hotel on Haven’s blog the day after the reading:

Hello everyone! Haven is a beautiful, generous wisp of a woman with a handsome husband and beautiful children. (Not to mention talent, dear lord!) I was terrified to talk to her, like an ass, but I had no idea what to say. The reading was fantastic, and it was like a comedy routine, but all off the cuff. At one point I was crying a bit from laughing so hard. I loved loved loved meeting Haven and Augusten, even though my forehead decided to grow a huge weird thing on it and I was wearing ugly fat clothes. Sigh.

All of the blog babies were fabulous, and I loved meeting the new girls, Amber, the friend of Bugs and Maureen’s sister Kathleen. The sisters were fantastic and working like machines for hours during their trip. Dedicated and smart women! Caryl was warm and generous and fun I’m sad I didn’t get to say goodbye to her. She seems just my type of person and I could talk to her for hours. She was crazy generous and gave all of us huge bags of gifts and bought all of us lunch. Thank you again! Maureen is so fabulous and smart and talented, and it was nice just to talk Aspie stuff with her. I just wanted to be twenty again so I could have that young happy energy that Kittery and Bug and Amber had. Kate made the best desert and I loved her little girl Alice. Sher was fun and I loved my artwork from her. You could see that her and Kate are kindred spirits. Linda was a sweet woman and I loved her son, who was so handsome and made me laugh when he asked me what ghetto I was from!

We saw Linda on the street and I screamed “Blog Baby” at her … hysterical to see someone from here driving the streets of Durham and to recognize them like that. I didn’t get to sit next to Nora too often but she was a sweet southern woman, and I appreciate all of her organizational tips. Shanna seems like a cool lady and I’m so happy for her achievements in writing. Also got to meet Kimbits at the reading as well as Amanda Clouds. After the reading I had every intention coming back down to the bar … pooped out and I had a laugh when I called Maureen @ 11 pm she was also in bed.

I took like 200 pictures, because I am a camera nut but also because I like documenting things and wanted all the blog babies left behind to see what was going on. I will write a post about the trip on my own blog, put all of them up on the yahoo group. I have crazy fun pics from the barn, but none of the pups as I thought it would spook them.

Right now I’m sick with a migraine after walking two hours in the Duke Gardens (Which were the best garden I’ve seen in the U.S.) and still @ The Washington Duke. Shanna I’d come find you but I’m miserable and need my Relpax and a coke asap.

Also, Haven, I took a picture of baby Gus’s teacher with Augusten at the reading. If you can have your husband get his email for me I will send the picture to him.

 

 

 

I may have had them sign eight books between them (Tom, the owner of the bookstore The Regulator, who put on the event, told me it was ok!) but I’m ashamed to post all of the pictures I took of the signed novels.  Needless to say Haven made sure we all felt loved like the good little babies we were.  I just have to say thank you to her, as she is such a wonderful person.

Wanna know more about Haven or the blog babies?  Start off by getting to know all of us here.  You can find Augusten’s blog via Havens.