The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

I just finished watching Season 3 (the final season) of Veronica Mars. I would have watched that TV show until the lead actress Kristen Bell died of old age. I would have consumed every second of Veronica’s life until her funeral, and then I would have looked down and discovered that my own hands were all wrinkled around the remote control and my heartbeat had slowed to practically nothing and I was eating Jello in a nursing home.

Then I’d want to start Season One of my own life but the DVDs would be all scratched and time-damaged by then and anyway modern systems wouldn’t be able to play the discs due to changes in digital encoding. So apparently I’d spent my entire adult life watching someone else’s entire adult life episode-by-episode, but I wouldn’t totally regret it because Veronica was a cool and interesting person. She was a teenage detective - that’s so awesome. And while I watched her on TV, I was also a teenage detective solving crimes and helping people. But now I am accidentally an old lady and I’m burying Kristen Bell like someone will bury me soon, not long after I finish this cup of Jello.

So I don’t care if Veronica never knew my name. I don’t care if Logan Echolls was never my actual boyfriend. I followed every Mars moment. I dreamed her dreams. When Veronica solved a high school mystery, so did I. It makes sense that we would grow old and die together. If I weren’t so attached to my television set, I would throw myself into her grave.

Goodbye, Veronica. It was worth it.

I went to a UVA basketball game tonight and was cruelly disappointed. Once again, John Grisham did not propose marriage to me on the Jumbotron. I could see him there in his floor seat, probably pretending he was Jay-Z or Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game. Then something about Clemson. Points. Points. Fire. A circus artist painting a portrait of Ray Charles at half time. Points. Half a bucket of popcorn. Some diet soda. Time out. Flashing lights. Loud noises. Dunk. Dunk. No marriage proposal from a handsome and wealthy older man who wears blazers with his jeans. A hotdog. Old lady hit in head with basketball. Points. Cheerleader formations (stop directing your splits toward Grisham, ladies; he is mine). A blimp. Some guy named Harris Teeter who really wants my business.

Sports Illustrated will probably be calling me soon about a writing position.

Maybe I don’t deserve to hang out at John Paul Jones Arena. But I know someone who does. Tonight I am going to launch the Onestarwatt Send My Friend Leslie to the Van Halen Show Contest. If you provide Leslie with a ticket to see David Lee Roth next week, you win the contest. She is a huge fan, maybe the biggest fan. Certainly the baddest fan with the least amount of money. And tonight she told me that if DLR ever ripped his spandex pants, she would patch them up for him. That’s right, she loves him and she knows how to sew. Let’s send her to the Arena.

I will pick a Onestarwatt Send My Friend Leslie to the Van Halen Show Contest winner just as soon as the Van Halen ticket comes in.

The Virginia Safari Park in Natural Bridge, VA is the saddest, most wonderful adventure you can take from an Interstate 81 exit. First, a photo essay:

Hi, furry cow creature. Do you want to wipe your boogers on Darren’s hand?

Look Harper! Baby piglets! We can just throw them some grain from this bucket and…

Holy shit! Roll up the window!

This was actually our second trip to the park. The first time, on Gene’s birthday, we thought it was a good idea to safari in the back of a pick-up truck. I still cannot believe this is legal–we must have signed some incredible waiver when we bought our tickets. Darren was gored by a tusked beast while he was trying to feed an ostrich from his bucket. He still has a scar. This time, we took Harper in a tusk-proof Saturn station wagon. Without automatic windows, we had a few close calls, but mostly we just got snotted on. The zebras were isolated this year, which was fortunate. They will bite off your face if you give them a chance. No wonder Jared Diamond said they were immune to domestication.

Attempts have been made to train zebras for riding since they have better resistance than horses to African diseases. However most of these attempts failed, due to the zebra’s more unpredictable nature and tendency to panic under stress. For this reason, zebra-mules or zebroids (crosses between any species of zebra and a horse, pony, donkey or ass) are preferred over pure-bred zebras. (link)

Wow, that was distracting. So anyway we fed giraffes from our hand, pet pygmy goats, saw a kangaroo with an upside-down baby in her pouch, and whispered sweet nothings to an albino tiger cub. Whatever–I’m so over it. Step it up next year, Virginia Safari Park. I need a unicorn or a baby dragon or something. I can fondle llamas at home.

(More pictures…)

If you go trick or treating in Lovingston, Virginia, you can expect to see:

1) historic houses with haunted front yards bombed with synthetic spiderwebs;

2) goth teenagers in extra-wide, circa 1996 skateboard pants;

3) a piglet in a tiger cub costume (and some other people);

4) a coven of six-year-old Disney princesses holding hands, clotheslining other children on their way to the candy;

5) preternaturally smiley and generous people handing out neon glow sticks and Ziplock bags stuffed full of Sweet Tarts, Whoppers, and Sprees. They were positioned on both sides of the Lovingston main street, doling out their goods not from a front porch, but from giant garbage bags on the sidewalk. “Those people are awesome,” I said. “They gave me my own glow bracelet. It’s pink.” “Seems suspicious,” said Darren. Then I reached into my candy sack and found a religious pamphlet published by Billy Graham and company. On the cover were cute cartoon kids dressed in Halloween costumes. They were walking up a shining path lit by pumpkins with trick or treat bags in their hands. At the end of the path was a gold mansion where God lived. Apparently God gives out the best candy.

I am going to my five-year college Homecoming, but ONLY so I can blog about it. Also it is rainy, dreary, and I am hungry for pancakes. This is the existential recipe for Williamsburg, Virginia.

I have two friends who are also going to Homecoming, but they’re not appearing until tonight and tomorrow, respectively, so this afternoon I am going to a religion lecture at the University Center and then I will either wander alone from bar to bar, trying to look pretty in case I am spotted by ex-boyfriends, or I will go back to my hotel room and watch cable TV. I am half-tempted to crash the football game tomorrow with my friend Diana, because she is from Armenia and has never seen a game of football. Especially a game of William & Mary’s caliber. My mother tells me she has “a friend” on the team that I should support, however this is a source of filial concern, not school spirit.

Last night I made business cards so I can do some networking during Homecoming. I think they turned out really well considering they are DIY and I don’t actually have a business.

Tonight I attended the Montessori School Spaghetti Dinner, a gala fundraising event that the children call a “sketti dinner” or alternatively a “spasgetti dinner.” We drank powdered lemonade out of paper cups and managed to maintain adult conversation over the din of students pretending to be either monsters or vulnerable peasants being attacked my monsters. Montessori has the world’s prettiest, most tattooed teachers, but they were tired from a day of molding young minds and cooking noodles. They were probably a little disappointed that no parents thought to bring a keg of beer to hide in the playground. I had a great time because I’m crazy about 1) dessert buffets, and 2) small children that other people have raised to be adorable. I heard one little girl on the jungle gym say, “I’m so shwetty from all this running.” After dinner it got dark outside fast and the kids sprinted back and forth like echo-locating bats while Darren and I stumbled around trying not to crash into playground equipment or cute outfits emerging from the night. It was like a scene from Children of the Corn but instead of a cornfield there were swingsets, sandboxes, and parents trying not to drop their cupcakes on the ground. Lastly, there were two canaries living in the dining hall and one little boy tucked himself under the blanket spread over their cage in order to stress them out to within an inch of their lives. I saw the back of his short legs and a convulsing blanket where his head should have been and I knew I had to do something. I caught the boy right before he tipped the cage sideways in order to grab a canary tail through the bars in his marinara-stained fingers. By saving the canaries, I felt like I did my good deed for the night. However our attempt at singing the birds to sleep was foiled because the little boy kept sneezing into the cage.

Excellent dinner, Montessori! May your children go easy on you Monday morning.

When my aunt and uncle invited me to watch UVA play Duke today from their private, air-conditioned box at Scott Stadium, I naturally said yes. Not because I like football, even remotely. Not because I own an orange, a blue, or an orange & blue item of clothing. Not because it ever pumps me up to see my home team win. I went to the game because I knew my friend Willis would be there in the sun-hammered stands, sitting with the common people, sweating in the 92-degree heat, unable to buy so much as a beer to quench his thirst (they don’t sell alcohol at Scott Stadium - this is the reason you will find a lot of airplane bottles hidden in sundress cleavage at ballgames). Meanwhile I would be in the BOX mingling with wealthy, sophisticated Charlottesvillians who not only didn’t yell “You suck!” when a Cavalier fumbled a play, but who also provided complimentary salmon pate and cupcakes for my lunch. You see why I was excited. This afternoon’s text messages:

Willis: At the stadium give me a call and we will meet at halftime or something.

Wistar: This box is awesome. We”re at goalpost uva team side duke’s endzone. Might not want to leave.

Willis: You suck it’s damn hot out here.

Wistar: I don”t know if i can leave or if u can come up. [This was a lie. I knew I was free to go downstairs because I had made inquiries. I asked my cousin if she had ever left the box to explore the regular stadium. “No,” she said. “Why would I?”)

Willis: I’m in sec 522 what would you like 2 do?

Wistar: Have a good life. I am the one drinking wine & caviar n the ac [Here I took some creative license. It was actually smoked salmon and capers on the buffet table, not caviar. I stood conspicuously in the doorway of the box, hoping that Willis had some binoculars so he could see me drinking my red wine from a goblet.]

Willis: I probably cant come in there you could get back in with your ticket how about you come to my section?

Wistar: Mayb i eat anothr free hot dog now

Willis: You’re the worst and not my friend anymor.

Wistar: Mayb i come c u after this cold beer

Willis: No seriously I hate you.

I went to see him in the stands of course. I stayed for four minutes of the second half. Four real minutes, not four football minutes (an hour). Willis was wearing jeans that were rolled up to his knees. He looked tired and kept wiping the sweat from his eyes. He had taken off his shoes and the tops of his feet were sunburned. For a second, I almost felt bad. Willis went to UVA. He drives from DC to Charlottesville for almost every home game, spending tons of money on hotels, tickets, plastic UVA cups full of soda, etc. He is a true fan. He has probably painted his face before in UVA colors. He probably owns Cavalier underpants. And meanwhile it was all I could do in the box to take my eyes off my sandwich and bottomless cup of cold beer and look at one of the box’s three plasma TVs to figure out which team had the ball. Not to mention I had prime viewing of all the cute hoi polloi babies in tiny cheerleader outfits and UVA t-shirts walking by with their parents below the box. “Look how cute that one is!” I’d say to Darren. “What are you - the baby police?” he’d respond.

Willis, I wish that my box didn’t belong to someone else, and I could have invited you in. Here is some belated box food for you:

-Hotdogs from silver serving tray, served with tongs, loaded with all your favorite condiments

-Cooler of iced sodas, including Coke Zero which tastes just like Regular Coke

-Cup of chilled gazpacho

-Mini fridge full of Heinekens

U-V-A! WA-HOO-WAH! xo