Meet My (Sort Of) Friend Amanda

The redundantly-named Nina's Coffee Cafe has, roughly, a 20-foot high ceiling. This ceiling is very hard and it really hurts when your head hits it. I found this out the hard way today while putting together this blog entry to pimp a book.

I believe in supporting my friends' writing, and my friend Amanda Adams recently published a book called “A Mermaid's Tale: A Personal Search for Love and Lore,” so here's the support. Actually Amanda's not really a friend, more of an acquaintance. Actually I just met her once. Actually I didn't really so much meet her as say hi to her as she was talking to a mutual friend, Sol, in W. A. Frost. Sol really is my friend, and Amanda's his friend, so she gets a support entry anyway, even if she doesn't know me from Daryl Hannah. Phew, glad we got that straight.

I haven't read her book yet, but I certainly intend to do so as soon as I finish Pale Immortal. Amanda's a pretty interesting person, as you can see from the subtitle to an article on her by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune:

“Amanda Adams has appeared in a 70-foot-tall jeans ad in Times Square and explored 14,000-year-old cave drawings in France. The model-turned-anthropologist also has a thing for mermaids.”

Who doesn't have a thing for mermaids? And I don't know many models-turned-anthropologists, so two things are in her favor right away.

I actually read the real paper article in the Strib, and there was an accompanying photograph with the article that I tried to find for this entry because it was cute, Amanda in a mermaid costume in a bathtub. At first glance it seemed there wasn't a photo with the online version of the article, but after closer investigation it turned out there was a link to a slide show called “Growing Up Mermaid.” Great, I thought, this is even better than a picture, I'll just link to the slide show in this post and everything's taken care of and I can go take my damn nap.

But first I thought I'd better watch the slide show I was linking to, just to make sure it worked and also because I was curious, having come close to almost very nearly meeting Amanda once. It really is a slide show, apparently of images that were snapped during a photo shoot for the article. Amanda's in a bathtub in a mermaid costume as I mentioned, sort of squirming around trying to get comfortable in a dry bathtub and failing miserably (my take on it anyway). The audio track is Amanda talking about stuff.

Amanda has a soft, buttery, sexy voice so I naturally turned up the volume on Lucille so I could hear her better. She's talking away, I'm watching the slides, everything's great, I'm just about ready for that nap, when all of a sudden there's a 300-decibel EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE from my laptop. This is when I became more intimately acquainted with Nina's ceiling than I really cared to.

When I landed, my first thought was that Lucille my laptop had gone to a manatee sex site without me and hemorrhaged and died on the spot. But Lucille seemed fine. What could the sound have been? It sounded like Flipper might sound if he was being goosed with a boat anchor (the pointy kind, duh). Flipper? Dolphin? Mermaid? Naw, it couldn't be part of the slide show.

Of course, it was part of the slide show. There really isn't an explanation given for this chilling sound on the audio track itself, but if you read the article the reporter says that Amanda “does a slinky shoulder shimmy, crosses her eyes and gives a penetrating siren song -- a dead ringer for Daryl Hannah's in 'Splash.'”

Whoa. Amanda Adams, of the soft, buttery, sexy voice, made that sound? I would have said that a human being was completely incapable of making a sound like that, even with the added incentive of a boat anchor. Sweet Jesus, no wonder her eyes crossed.

And the reporter called that “a penetrating siren song?” Well, she certainly got the “penetrating” part right, but if sirens sang like that the Odyssey would have been a lot smaller and less-interesting book.

The fleet of Odysseus, Galley 3:

“Arrrgh, Ernie, too bad 2000 years from now people will think we talked like pirates instead of the refined ancient Greeks we really are.”

“Jeez, Phil, what an odd observation to m-”

“EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE!”

“HOLY SHIT! Ernie, what the hell was that?”

“I dunno, but it scared the crap out of me too! I'm pretty sure we aren't trailing the pointy anchor, so the chances it could cornhole a cute, lovable and telegenic dolphin are slim to none.”

“Say, aren't we in siren territory? Maybe it's the dreaded siren song we were warned about in Advanced Galleys and Navigation.”

“That's supposed to lure us to our death on the rocks? Lure us? Zeus, my eyes still haven't uncrossed since I heard that gods-awful noise. How could it possibly lure us anywh-”

“Hey Phil! Watch out for those rocks dead ahead! Arrrgh!”

Splash.

And ahem, I don't think Daryl Hannah ever made a sound like that in the movie. I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if she was goosed by a boat anchor, or anything else for that matter. I was watching closely. I was trying to figure out how Tom Hanks was going to do her, before she turned herself into a much more satisfactory dancing partner and even I could figure out how the parts went together. And sure as hell if Daryl Hannah had made that sound she would have been hit on the head with an oar and thrown back into the ocean, along with the used syringes and whatever the hell else was caught that day that couldn't be pawned off on unwary diners at Delmonico's.

So watch the slide show and listen to Amanda and her unusual vocal stylings if you dare. And you should probably buy her book anyway. She's a friend of my friend Sol. I certainly don't know her.

-- Hulles