Shrine

One word: Nebraska.

Bumper stickers aside

Your college decal does not impress me, plus other matters of loyalty at this week’s column.

Previous columns

• Something about John Muir and shaking one’s ass in an empire-waist dress
• How I became a lounge singer
• Don’t break your stupid head
• The slopes of Christmas madness
• Education by wipeout
• Electric Santa takes over a ghost town
• The antidote to stinky fruit lotion
• Alien boobies and a castle in the sky
• The world’s assiest sweet potatoes
• When dog owners are as bad as kid owners
• Living the game of Pitfall
  
• A dead baby’s spirit dwells here
  
• Bjorn is my imaginary friend
  
• The lowdown on getting high
  
• New England is our bitch
  
• How to pee in the woods
• Of severed heads
• The crazy-stupid line
  
• Sitting in water during a lightning storm
• My tragic Perseid poop out of 2009
  
• Doodie stops here
  
• Vrr-RROOOOMMMM, pussayhs!
  
• Retching for a view

I’ve joined the rest of you

It started while I was waiting for a phone to be answered.

See, I have to call like 30 police agencies at the end of each night for my job. Usually I check Facebook and Twitter at the end of the list, just before I go home. But the other night, I tried something different.

I watched Glee.

I was predisposed to hate Glee. Their “Last Christmas” filled my mouth with bile.

But the show is … likeable. Hey, it’s network television. For the masses. Of course the plot is idiotic. Of course the songs are auto-tuned beyond all personality. Of course the vastly superior black singer will be featured only when the cute white girl can’t hit the big notes.

Still, the cheerleading coach is awesome, and the caricatures of high school types are so over-the-top that they kind of work.

I know because I was one of them.

In the last episode I saw, that white girl is trying to persuade the glee club to be in a yearbook picture so she can have more yearbook pictures than anyone in the history of the school.

Yeah, I was THAT girl in high school.

Oh, I had a 4.0 and reminded people of it almost every day. I was in every activity — and all but fabricated some of them. Those five mornings I made crafts with the church preschool kids so I could skip the sermons? That made me a “Sunday School Teacher” on applications. Other kids actually had me examine their scholarship forms, like an H&R Block guy at tax time, to suggest extra “activities” they could claim.

I was an impossible snot. My friends from high school are clearly some of the most tolerant people ever.

Have I changed? Do I still look for ways to hold myself above others? Do I still cry when I lose at Boggle?

Sometimes. But I don’t take myself quite so seriously anymore.

You learn something talking to 30 police agencies a day: Backstory matters.

They don’t have scholarships for people who stay out of trouble even though their families beat each other with truck parts and hold up gas stations with underwear on their faces. They don’t have yearbook pages for people who graduate even though they had their heads whacked against walls when they were babies.

Those people were the real overachievers. Even if they now watch Glee.

Oh, wait.

Is it your belief that Elvis Costello isn’t cool?

I saw my first Grammy ceremony on Sunday.

Well, it was playing in the background at work after the local news. I didn’t notice the TV was on until Taylor Swift sang and blood started pooling on each of my shoulders.

Then she won a bunch of awards for singing. She even recorded the best album of the year, I’m told.

Here are some thoughts on Zamfir, master of the pan flute.

Lookie!

Awhile ago, Andrew Sullivan invited his Daily Dish readers to submit pictures taken through their windows. For fun, Said Guy sent one from our front window.

Then Sullivan and some other people picked 190 windows to feature in a photo book that goes chronologically through the day.

Click to Page 196 here to see Said Guy’s view!