I don’t want to pretend that I have *any* talent for music. In fact, I will venture a guess and say I’m the *least* talented person musically except for, say, my deaf family…of whom some actually formed a Christian folk group called the “Signs of the Harvest”. I have no ear for it. Ahem. But, I have gotten quite good at the medium level of Guitar Hero (hard and expert seem positively savant-like at this point) and I am amazed at the level of intense concentration and full body cooperation goes into my hitting 100% of the notes (brag). This has given me a new found respect for the rock and roll star.

The fact that they are able to play any song, let alone several in a row, and using real strings and chords instead of color coded buttons is mind boggling. I actually got tired in the middle of one song and thought, “My hands hurt and I really want a sip of that wine.” So I hit pause and sipped the wine and stretched my hand which had frozen stiff into its claw like pose necessary to hit the blue and red buttons simultaneously. Just how the fuck do they play with a fly buzzing around and all that hair in their eyes? In their mouth? And drunk? Because that’s how I’m trying to play and it’s hard!

—Kambri
It must be an act. Rock and roll stars are actually sober savants who calculate their drug addled look.

The offending commentor called this morning to apologize. She ran our conversation by a few people (wha?) and they agreed — her statements are disrespectful to me, my work and accomplishments.

I made sure to remind her that everyone, not just [Redacted], has obstacles on their path to success. Identify yours and get over them the best you can.

This brings to mind something that irks me about women in business. I’ve read numerous times that women tend to say they got lucky in their careers while men will say they earned their success. Women don’t want to seem boastful.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

Well put. I say there is no such thing as luck when it comes to business. If you make good decisions and develop a good reputation, you put yourself in a position to get the lucky bounce and are equipped to accept and capitalize on opportunities that come your way.

—Kambri
Not lucky; GOOD.

“[Redacted] has to work so hard for everything. Kambri is just so lucky. Things just fall into her lap.”

I had a great lunch at Time Out New York today as part of the Independent Magazine Advisory Group (IMAG). Meetings like that always make my brain go into overdrive at all the possibilities that might never be realized simply because I am just me. I definitely need a staff. Once this Jest launch party is under my belt, it’s time to start the interview process. Meanwhile, any college students interested in being my intern, please drop me a line.

—Kambri
Insulted.

Before New York and before Cincinnati, I was living in Columbus, Ohio with not much to do other than drink and eat and sleep and work. What a dull town for a post-college age woman with no interest in children or marriage. Needless to say, I found myself drinking, eating, sleeping and working too much. With no theater scene to be found, I landed a role as “promoter”. A couple of NASCAR events and lots of Stoli vodka later, I invited my mom and her mother to come visit.

Born in 1923, Grandma and her twin brother Bobby were deaf as was their older sister, Wilma. Grandma dyed her hair jet black and wore bright red lipstick every day, even if she were just puttering around the house in her terry cloth slippers and housecoat. She subscribed to the National Enquirer, and kept back issues piled in a stack near her recliner curiously mixed with Archie and Jughead comic books. She never missed a single episode of The Price is Right or Young and the Restless. She didn’t vocalize much, but when she did, hers was a husky, gravelly voice from years of smoking a pack of Winstons a day. She kept her cigarettes in a leather case and her lighter was emblazoned with an eagle made of turquoise, her birthstone.

I spent many summers living with my grandparents. Grandma told me that having me around was like having a miniature version of my mother. I gave Grandma a voice, making her day-to-day life a bit easier. I accompanied her to doctors’ appointments, the pharmacy, the bank and the shoe store, where she gave me instructions on her various needs. Girls at school could keep their silly role-playing games of doctor or bank teller. I was living the real deal.

Now 78 years of age, deaf and widowed, life was different. Her house was no longer the hub of activity with Deaf friends and family coming and going. Instead, she lived alone in a small apartment or split time living with each of her daughters, my mom and aunt.

But never once did Grandma say “No” to an invitation to tag along, even if this meant hitting every seedy night club hawking the new flavored vodkas Stoli had to offer with her granddaughter in Columbus, Ohio.

That’s how, one night, we found ourselves at the infamous Red Party held at the biggest gay bar in town. There were gorgeous drag queens and transsexuals doing dead-on impersonations of Whitney, Liza and Barbra, lots of leather and latex, and an abundance of gratuitously exposed skin.

Minutes after we arrived, we spotted a barely legal young man speaking in sign language. “What were the chances?” We marveled. I introduced him to Grandma and learned his name was Brian. He was from Iowa and, not out of the closet back home, had traveled to Columbus specifically for this gay olde time. He spent at least an hour chatting with Grandma and they hit it off.

“What a nice boy,” she signed to me. Flurried hands, free shots of Stoli, laughter…she was having a ball. No pun intended.

Soon, Brian was blitzed and began acting how, I suspect, he would have behaved earlier had it not been for the distraction of a 78 year old deaf woman in a gay nightclub during the Red Party where he knew no one. No one else but Grandma until he started making out with another man whose name I never got and I’m sure he never did either.

The kissing progressed until Brian was performing an extremely provocative striptease/lap dance for his suitor just inches away from Grandma. Brian was down to a g-string, yet Grandma wasn’t agog or aghast or disgusted or confused. She sat on her bar stool watching them with the same curiosity you might display at the primate section of the zoo. “They’re so like me; yet not at all.”

I watched her watching them when Brian and his new friend disappeared. Grandma exhaled deeply and signed to me, “W-o-w! I have never seen a man strip and dance like this. Oh, sure, I’ve seen women strip before, but never a man!”

“Really? You’ve seen women strip before? When?!”

“Oh, I don’t know. Last week?”

Huh. Last week. Last week?

Just like that she reinvented herself to me. Here stood before me a woman who wasn’t afraid of trying something new without judgment, defying convention of what a mature lady should do and, well, just having a plain old good time. I don’t know why she was at a strip club the week before, but today she was with me at the Red Party and I loved her all the more for it.

I’m so happy she lived to appreciate the internet and embraced the technology that knocked down the barriers of her deaf world. I’ll miss serving as her “assistant” by interpreting for her . I’ll miss her laugh and the hours of SkipBo we played. Mostly, I’ll miss asking her to tag along with me on an adventure knowing she’ll say, “Yes.”

I love you, Grandma.

—Kambri

My pal Mike Wolf passed away very suddenly last night. My heart goes out to his family and dear friends for the loss of such an amazingly enthusiastic, passionate, fun and funny man. I simply am too shocked to really come up with a fun story about a few of the good times we had — Portable Comedy, Russian Vodka Room, Siberia and some other random bar come to mind. Sadness is multiplied knowing that his life was cut so short. (Mike would have inserted a short joke here.)

This comes on the heels of learning that Christian’s uncle, Father John T. Finnegan, also passed away last night (at 6:30 PM to be exact). He was the giver of my Christmas gift that nearly made my head explode from the weight of his kindness. He served in the Marines, was an attorney, penned books and devoted his life to God. What a full, rich life he led surrounded by such an adoring family.

Two lives find themselves at an end, one all too brief and one long and fulfilled, but both very sad to see leave.

—Kambri
Rest in peace, Mike and Father Jack. You will both be missed.