the cheese stands alone

Pinch Hitter

The Friday Five took the day off, so Kelley took her hands off her celebrated sac and stepped up to the plate with her own version.

1) What is your earliest memory? Be specific.
When I was four years old, my birthday party was held in my grandparents' back yard, complete with balloons, streamers, hordes of screaming neighborhood children, and a cake in honor of my then-obsession- elephants.
I had a blue elephant cake. It was gorgeous.
This was in the era of the Betty Crocker/Donna Reed housewife, where cake decorating was a sign of ultimate housewifely perfection. My mom, never to be bested by some pearl-wearing twit on television, had been baking for two days, getting this cake of all cakes juuuuuuuust right.
She carried it proudly out and placed it on the center table, carefully centering it so as to best present her talents to the neighbors. As she stepped back to call everyone round to come see the cake and sing Happy Birthday, I noticed a fly land on Mr. Elephant Cake.
I swatted the fly.
Hard.
For years after that, we had plain, sheet cakes from the grocery store.

2) What is the strangest dream that you can ever remember having?
A long time ago, I dreamed that Ted Kennedy was scolding me for not having varnished a bookshelf properly. I remember little more than a vast assortment of chins.

3) Where is your favorite place in the world to be, and why?
When someone says "Go to your happy place", I imagine a tasteful hotel room, up around the fifteenth floor, with a huge bed mounded with soft pillows, balcony doors open and soft warm breezes blowing the curtains... remote in one hand, perfect dirty vodka martini in the other, and room service at my beck and call.

4) What would be the most horrible sort of death to suffer, and why?
Being buried alive.
Or no room service. Ever.

5) If you found a bottle with a Genie in it, what would your three wishes be? (Three only. None of this "Three more wishes!" crap).
To blog like Allah, to look like Anna, and to dance like this guy.