I kinda have a thing for Red Tailed Hawks. I view them as my spirit animal-no joke. I am dead serious about this. Not in a, I'm getting a swooping giant hawk tattoo across my back, but definitely in a, my day just got better because I saw a Red Tailed Hawk perched on a highway street light on my way into work this morning-way... That kind of thing.
see Katrina? This would be what they look like :)
I've had this dream of one day being cast in a roll as a super villain whose awesome super villain name is Hawkeye. If you've ever spoken with me on AIM or bid on one of my EBay auctions or played Harm's Way with me on XBox, you already know Hawkeye is my permanent "handle".
Let's start from the beginning. I've always wanted to be a villain-let's face it, villains have way more fun and get the best costumes (or did until the X-Men movies came along-ridiculous black leather jumpsuit action!) so ever since I was old enough to understand the ever present good vs. evil battle in all things action adventure-I've wanted to be the badie.
It wasn't until the 1990s when I sweet cartoon called Gargoyles came out that I finally put a name to my alter-ego, in a manner of speaking anyways.... Now, I don't have a vintage (ha vintage) copy of TV Guide so I can't give you an exact timeline here ; but from what I can recall (mind you I'm regressing back to the age of 12 or 13) Gargoyles (or possibly Batman which might have come on right before Gargoyles) had this one sexy "black widow" type badie that wore some kind of tight fitting-vinyl looking red and black jump suit and had a bright red scar over her eye. Couldn't tell you what her villain name was, but her scar got me thinking that if I were to ever live out my dream of playing the badie, I too would definitely need a scar. And if it was going to be similar to hers and cut across one of my eyes, my villain name should some how play off of that badass facial affliction.
Thus Hawkeye was born.
Now, this was before AIM and XBox and all the fun stuff in which you can create your own nickname so no one was ever really given this information and it kind of remained in the back of my mind.
Cut to my senior year of high school (back in 2002-yes kids I'm "old"). I went and toured a college I was interested in called the University of Hartford. I was working at Hot Topic in the Danbury mall and one of the customers and I got into a conversation about colleges and he told me I'd be a fool to look anywhere other then UHa. So I check it out, it sounds pretty cool and I apply.
My mother and I take the drive through CT to tour the college and before we even get there, the cosmos slap me across with face with a shit-ton (that's a copy-rited term so hands off) (oh and really? copy-rited? is that even right?) of signs that scream "This is where you need to be!"
The closest local park to the school is "Elizabeth Park", umm...cool...... The closest church to the school is a Unitarian Universalist (sick architecture building of badassery) church (yes I'm UU r u?) okay...also incredibly randomly cool.... and then we turn into the school and the Universe plants a big wet one on me... The University of Hartford's mascot is the Hawks. The school colors-red, white and black. Wow-seriously?! Nice!
I signed up right then and there, I mean I had to work to get in because as an artist, I'm not exactly the bees knees, but as a chick who likes to talk about art and promote any and everything that makes me happy until I can pretty much be damn sure it also makes you happy, I was GOING to this school.
The next four years were some of the best of my life and throughout those four years, I got to see the resident Red Tailed Hawks swoop over head hundreds of times. It's love baby...
Cut to...5? 4? 5? shit really? I'm like in the "adult category now?! Disgusting.... years later, and I sit at a very nice cubicle (cubicles by Lizz, call me-I can make any work space fabulous!) against a huge window with a lovely view of an abandoned (currently for sale!) officey-type house and a whole bunch of very big, very woodsy trees. And nearly every day, the local Red Tailed Hawk makes his way over to one of the close trees, sits around, looks out for prey, and says hello to me. It's honestly the best part of my day.
You should see my phone, I have dozens of cell phone pictures of my little buddy and the next weekend shift I have, I'm bringing in my super awesome (Christmas gifted with love) brand new digital camera so I can get a nice up close shot of him which I will then, of course, share with all of you.
I even observed him plucking a squirrel off a tree one afternoon. It was of course sad but I openly squealed (albeit quietly-this is an office setting you'll remember) watching the squirrels fluffy tail swing violently back and forth as the squirrel was carried off to be devoured as my homeboys' lunch.
I actually texted all of this to Joe and went so far as to say "my Hawk's eating good tonight!" to which Joe replied "wow that's messed up" Yes, yes it is.. But hey, it's nature, watch the Discovery channel for 15 minutes and then give me a call, I'm just sayin'.
Anyway, that's my Hawk story. I love them, and I think cosmically they love me (?) And hopefully one day, I'll get to live out my dream and get cast in the roll as a badie with a super sexy/toughass scar across my left eye (idk why left I just feel like its right...get it?) with a huge Red Tailed Hawk on my shoulder walking through some warehouse with explosions going off everywhere and people screaming "Oh my God, it's Hawkeye, we gotta move!" and then I signal my Hawk and he flies off to scalp the innocent heros' sidekicks (heros don't get killed, we know this)
So if any (all five) of your readers out there ever meet JJ Abrams, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks or Kevin Smith, please tell them that there's an amazingly awesome Taurus (yup even with the new zodiac change crisis I'm still a stubborn bull) that loves all of their work and would love to one day play a badie in one of their films-even if the film is an absolute piece of shit. <--Please emphasize that point, I'm not picky, I just want to live out my dream.
Thanks ;)
Sidestory-real quick since I kind of rambled with that last one...
Joe is also a total nerd and we support each others' nerdiness to extremes and back in October when we were road tripping through the midwest (see WindTurbine post), we drove past a car who had a bumper sticker that said "Hawkeyes" and we both pretty much peed a little.
From that moment on it was our mission (mostly Joe's actually cause he's awesome) that I was going to get me one of those stickers before we went home. We drove to a handful of super markets, Walmarts (yes evil, evil Walmarts) and gas stations trying to find this sticker. You see, we were in Iowa and Iowa state college's mascot is the Hawkeyes (Henky the Hawk to be exact.. Henky? Really?..terrible...) so not only did we make the trip home with a HUGE Hawkeyes bumper sticker, we also got a sweet set of Hawkeyes pens which I use everyday at work and two big ole Hawkeyes street signs. LOVE!
Nerds-go live your dreams. And if you can't, at least promote and decorate with tiny reminders like crazy so you never forget to continue to dream, that's all I'm sayin' :)
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