Happy Day of the Dead

occupants

the things that have currently taken up residence in my mind, like uninvited couch surfers who refuse to leave, eat all your food and have sex in your bed without asking:

* the woman in the apartment next door rescued a dog that had been used as a bait dog to train pit bulls to fight. which is lovely of her to do. except that whenever she leaves it alone, it cries and cries. I don't know what the solution is, because even if she is gone for a couple of hours it sits and howls in there. I can't write her a note without it just sounding like I'm being a grouch. what solution is there? she can't stay at home all the time. but the howling!

* I've hit that cycle in hair maintenance where I am once again obsessed with getting bangs. is it a bad sign that every hair dresser I've ever asked has strongly recommended my not going the bangs route? as jeff says, "you don't want to look like a bowling ball". and yet.

* I've been choking sometimes when I swallow. or choking on nothing; my spit just goes down the wrong pipe. isn't this one of the early signs of parkinson's?

* there's cellulite on my ass and thighs. I can see it. I don't want to, but I can.

* there's an old lady who sometimes sits in the lobby of our apartment building all day. she sits there with a couple of shopping bags, and just sits and stares out. sometimes, she wears a low-cut top and one of her breasts flops out. I don't even know if she notices. but that just can't mean anything good.

* what's up with people with missing teeth lately? is it a trend? don't people fill in teeth what've fallen out anymore? I'm talking people in their 30s. with big holes in their grins.

* when I was 5 or 6, I fell and lodged a pencil lead in my leg. I forgot about it until about 20 years later when it slowly worked its way out. it did NOT look like a pencil lead anymore. what else is my body going to spit out when I least suspect?

* am I boring?

ter da!

headboards are expensive!


unless, of course, you go to home depot and buy an 8' x 4' tyvek insulation board ($5.99), 3 yards of the cheapest unbleached artists canvas ($8.97), a skein of charcoal grey cotton yarn ($4.99) and an embroidery needle (5 for $2.19) and make your own:

andy

lately, I have been fixated on andy gibb. there must be some vh1 behind the music on him or something.

top five

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

those pagan canadians! (part 1)

woman: so, how long will you be home this Thanksgiving?

girl: I dunno, it depends on if Bill's going to be coming with.

woman: well, I guess that's okay. are you two thinking of spending the weekend before or after?

girl: it doesn't matter really.

woman: what about his family?

girl: well, it's not like he's going to be celebrating American Thanksgiving with them.

woman: (gasp) why not? do you mean he isn't a Christian?

girl: what are you talking about, he's Canadian.

woman: Canadians are Christians!

girl: yes, but they don't celebrate American Thanksgiving!

woman: why wouldn't Canadian Christians celebrate Thanksgiving? what are YOU talking about?

girl: Thanksgiving isn't a religious holiday you know. It's the day the we honor the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, and the Indians, the harvest, blah blah blah.

woman: so why doesn't he celebrate it?

girl: because he's CANADIAN.

woman: Canadians can't be thankful?

girl: they ARE. but they're thankful in October.

woman: I don't know what you're talking about. are you coming home with the heathen or what?

dilemmar

the chiikster has just pointed out to me that def leppard and poison and cheap trick are on tour. hold on while I grab the railing and gasp a bit.

on Sept. 5, I could either be at the Las Vegas MGM, having put away a 19.99 buffet of steak and cheesecake and $25 worth of $5 martini drink vouchers...OR at m & j's wedding, watching two people I love stand in front of each other and vow to love each other for ever and ever blah blah blah, while the all of sit around and surreptitiously look at our watches wondering when someone in a white coat will start coming around with trays of meat sticks and alcohol.

aarrgh, my brain is tearing itself apart.

def leppard! poison! cheap trick!!! I need to lie down.

family reunion

a couple of days ago, I went to visit my cousin. or rather, my cousin's kids (my cousin and his wife were out and left the kids with his visiting mother).

the first thing I notice is that the boy, age 9, is large. way larger than he's meant to be. I guess it's not that surprising, given that his mother has always seemed inexplicably afraid of her children not eating enough. so much so that she never takes a 10-minute car trip without packing them with chips and candy. from the time they were babies, she's insisted they eat adult-sized portions. and it looks like it's finally catching up to the (not so) littler one.

the next thing I see are the green streaks in the 11-year old's hair. when I comment, she tells me how her mother highlighted her hair blue but it faded really quickly and left her with moss-colored strands she's always fidgeting with. she's wearing shorts so short that the pockets are hanging out the bottom, and a rhinestone-studded belly top that she's proud of having picked out herself. she likes to show off, "her style", she says, anachronistically topping it off with a minnie-mouse hair bow perched atop her crown.

the boy has eyelashes so long they look like inkstains around his eyes. I have him close his eyes so I can imagine they were mine. the girl notes the stubbiness of her own lashes, and I tell her I know how she feels. she tells me how her mother makes her put on special eyelash-growth serum every night, and that she hates it. but she wants her eyelashes to grow so that she can have "pretty eyes". it comes out later that her mother is contemplating plastic surgery for her now, so that her features will set "correctly" before she gets too old.

the boy, on the other hand, who is blessed with abnormally good looks, has self-selected himself as an idiot. "I'm stupid", he whines in a baby voice, and tries to burrow up into my side. I suppose this could've been construed as cute when he was half this age, but now at 9, and a good 35 pounds overweight, it's actually very alarming. however, given that the last time I saw him, 7 months ago, he refused to get up off the floor and would only eat from your hand, begging you to "order" him "around like a puppy", I guess this is an improvement.

onion rings for the pig-a-lings

the meal in the lower left is mine: pulled pork sandwich and a large order of onion rings (I ate half of them as the other meals were coming out). blob in the upper left had just a pork sandwich, and bleep in the lower right fries, beans & a burger. blowie in the upper right, has a scoop of cole slaw and some fries. she ate 2 of them. I counted.

look, the food was great. the guy who runs the place keeps the smoker going all the time, and so the meats are always melty shreds of barbecue. and the onion rings were perfect--dry and crunchy with thick onion slices practically steamed sweet.

it's hard to feel girly, though, with people always commenting on how much food you eat. "if anyone can put it away, it's *s!" how do they do it? those girls who eat 2 fries and a couple of shreds of cabbage and then sigh, "I'm stuffed!" until their next meal, hours later?

oinck.

fear and longing

lately I find myself, panicked at the thought that there isn't enough time. not enough time to do everything I'd thought I'd do. not enough time for everything I haven't thought of doing yet. not enough time to fix the things I left undone.

what is this sense, that the universe is slowly escaping me? every breath stolen from between my lips, each second being swept away from under my feet. the world seems unstable, and I with it. unsure of each move, uncertain of each step. everything seems a gamble, borrowed from a bank of time lost.

I'm afraid.

spoiler alert

I saw The Orphan this weekend, and I need to talk to you about it.

Now, I'm going to talk about what happens in the film, so if you can't handle the truth, I'd advise you to look away now. Yes, spoilers will be given. But don't worry, I won't ruin the film for you. Mr. Collet-Serra already did that.

So, let's talk about what makes this one of the most preposterous sequence of events shown in cinema ever. I'm just going to give you a synopsis of the plot movements:

1. Mom had a stillbirth a couple of years ago, fell into a deep depression-fueled alcoholism, almost lost her toddler daughter because of an alcoholic bender, did lose her job, almost lost her husband, but pulled herself together and hasn't had a drink in a year.

2. Barely a year sober, and with the discovery of her husband's adultery still a fresh emotional wound, Mom decides adopting a child is what she needs to fill the void left by the stillbirth, which is memorialized in a huge rosebush and plaque in the backyard.

3. Mom and Dad go to an orphanage, look around at all the kids, and settle on the one child who is not attending the party and who is not liked by the others, assuring her that "it's okay to be different."

4. Three weeks later, they have an 9-year old daughter to add to their other two children--yes, they also have a 5ish-year old girl and an 11ish-year old boy, who is very clear that he is unhappy about this sudden new addition to his already unstable family.

5. Need I mention that the adopted orphan has a subtle russian accent that steadily grows stronger, throws a fit if someone asks her to remove the wide velvet ribbons she wears on her neck and wrists, only wears old-fashioned taffeta party dresses, has a leather-bound bible filled with pictures of middle-aged men, and spends much of her time painting lovely pictures of houses and scenes that glow with demons and torture under a blacklight?

6. Mom thinks there's something wrong with her, especially as kids who cross her have a way of winding up with broken bones, but Dad chooses to side with the adopted girl they know nothing about. The kids aren't too fond of her, but are afraid to speak up, especially as she threatens to kill one of them and castrate the other.

7. Anyways, she smashes a bird, bludgeons a nun, chops up the memorial rosebush the Mom is obsessed with, breaks her own arm with a vise and blames the mom, sets fire to the treehouse with the boy in it forcing him into a coma, and then unplugs his respirator and smothers him with a pillow.

8. You'd think someone would catch on at this point, but they're all against Mom now, even her therapist, who wants her to go into rehab and out of the house. She refuses but ends up sedated in the hospital while Dad takes the two girls home and starts to drink.

9. You'd think he was the alcoholic because while he's drinking himself into oblivion, Orphan cuts up one of Mom's dresses, paints herself up like a hooker and then offers herself up to "John", previously known as Dad.

10. Dad pushes 9-year old off, saying "you're just a little girl", which sets of crazy-sparks in the Orphans eyes, and she spends a long time staring into the mirror with crazy eyes. The kind rimmed with melting eyeliner and mascara.

11. Meanwhile, Mom in the hospital receives a phone call from the Estonian "orphanage" that is revealed to be a MENTAL INSTITUTION, not an orphanage, and for God's sake, if the Orphan is in the house, get out now because she is dangerous! Not just kind of dangerous, but really dangerous because she's not a 9-year old girl, she is a 33-year old woman with a hormone deficiency and psychopathic tendencies, preying on the fathers of families she is adopted into and then killing everyone in the house when she is rejected.

12. Mom tears out of the hospital bed and into a car speeding as fast as she can on icy roads in pitch black with a phone she keeps dropping as she tries to call the house repeatedly where the husband she is trying to reach is being stabbed a million times by the Orphan who then grabs the revolver and goes after the Daughter.

13. Mom arrives just in time to rescue Daughter, getting shot a couple of times in the arm, but ultimately dodging the rest of the 8 bullets that came out of the gun.

14. The fight ends up on the frozen lake outside their house where one of the bullets creates a hole into which both Mom and Orphan fall.

15. After a fierce struggle, Mom climbs out.

16. Just as she's almost safe, a thin white Russian orphan arm shoots out of the hole in the ice and grabs Mom's leg.

17. Mom looks back and sees the Orphan's sad eyes, crying as she begs, "Mommy, please don't let me die!"

18. To which Mom replies, "I'm not your fucking Mommy!" and kicks the Orphan in the face.



I just wanted to get it out of my system. Thanks for listening.

diet

prognosis...negative

okay, just finished watching the happening.

here is my hypothesis: m. night shyamalan has asperger's.

the wooden, stilted dialogue, that all makes technical sense, but has no actual rhythm or emotional resonance?

every single clue methodically linked to some other turn of events, no matter how small. an obsession to these sorts of ties that actually ruins the flow of the actual progression of story?

masterful glimpses into the character, that are muddled in with such underdeveloped, immature takes on humanity that one has to conclude it was by chance?

obsession with fantasy. lack of interest in human development. technicality overriding nuance every time?

yes, the work of a man on the spectrum.

a memo to m night

dear mr. shyamalan,

I respect, more than respect, the fact that the sixth sense was a modern masterpiece of storytelling.

but seriously?

in signs you tried to tell us that the proof of god lies only in the shallowest of coincidences, in the village, that the only ego greater than a handful of brilliant academicians determined to create the world anew was yours. in lady in the water, I don't even know what you were trying to show us, but you did it in the most grating and offensively stereotyped ways possible.

today, I gave you one last chance and watched unbreakable, again starring bruce willis and samuel l. jackson. I don't know how you do it--what sort of directorial magic do you pull to turn strong actors into wooden-tongued caricatures?

this is your last chance. I'm 52 minutes into the happening now. mark wahlberg is apologizing to a plant, in order to stave off world annihilation. I know it's not going to get any better. but please, does it have to get worse?

I swear it, I won't be watching another of your films ever again. at least, not until the next one comes out.

we are coming...back!

Torchwood

That's all I can say

just a test

peanut gallery

I'm back! and so are the tindersticks!

o, you assholes. did you even notice we were gone?

down and out

but coming back soon. I'm writing!

sometimes, when I'm sitting there, writing grant abstracts and pushing through performance reviews, I think to myself, that what I really want to be doing is creating 3-minute stop-animation cooking shows using candy and rubik’s cubes. Really, my talent is wasted here in “research”.

Or so, you know, I say.

all summer in a day

I think the sun is a flower
that blooms for just one hour

all summer in a day, ray bradbury, 1954

tommy!

sometimes what I love is the unchangingness of it all. I love going back and stepping back.

and really, going to tommy's can't be described as anything but stepping back. in all sorts of ways.

that bright red sign. the steeply gabled little stand. the attack pigeons.





I especially love the line drawing of mr. tommy. all smiles and hatchmarks. like, "you wanna some more ketchup? go ahead, they's a whole bucket of packets right in fronna you. take as much as you want. ketchup's good for you!"

and while you're waiting there for your tommyburger order, you're peering in, wondering who the tommy offspring are. is it the one cutting onions? the one on the phone? the one asking you if you want a large or supah-large coke?


and, then, voilà, tommy burgers. with a side of tommy fries. and fistfuls of ketchup packets.

a and yet, something is missing. something doesn't feel quite right. what is it? more ketchup?

...maybe...maybe, *s!, these just weren't ever as good as you're pretending to remember them as being.

somehow, I skipped straight from julian lennon's valotte to bon jovi's slippery when wet--though in hindsight, maybe not such a far leap after all. which the doors opened to all sorts of aquanet-sustained musical adventures. and then! 1987's appetite for destruction, which changed my life. but that's another story.

the point being there was a time when I cared that they replaced adam curry with riki rachtman. that's all.

les légumes de montréal

just to share memorable quotes from a weekend of guillaume (in no particular order, that's for sure):

7. oh, I'll eat chicken, for the right occasion. I'm not THAT kind of vegan.

6. I choose incurable halitosis over a walleye every time.

5. what's that smell? is it you? or...is it..me...?

4. oooooh, webbed toes?! I like this game!

3. what? I'm just letting the body do it's thing.

2. whoa. is this..lint? is it...NAVEL lint?

1. ve frainch, you see, ve aire vairy crue-ell to our cheeckens.

no one nose

this is what the new nose looks like.

as far as I can tell, it looks e-ZACKLY like the old one.

but really, who's to say? it's a pretty good nose, as far as I can judge. you know, straight. even tone and coloring. small pores. no stray hairs or extra bits of stuff.


it got me thinking about my own. I could probably use an upgrade. I've had this one for, like, forever. and I think it might be on its last legs. better dump it now before it craps out on me at some point when I really need it.

do they know it's thanksgiving

firstly, I can't believe we just ate thanksgiving dinner with a side of cranbelly jelly, sliced straight from the can. something about those acidic rings of jelly, with those ridges pressed into the sides makes me want to really put up a fight. like there isn't enough wrong with the world?

second, since when did they start showing five episodes of the twilight zone and calling it a marathon? and the worst five, too. you never let the viewers pick! they're idiots! they've probably got slices of cranberry jelly from a can on their tables!

gah. what exactly am I thankful for again?



o, right.

can we say goodbye to 2008 already?

a little more of less

there's nothing more satisfying than the thrill of getting rid of something. I love having less of something than when I started.

it almost doesn't matter what it is. cans in the cupboard, clothes in the closet, piles of papers, stuff.

I love bareness. the luxury of having less.


I'm packing up boxes and suitcases of things to take down and scatter as far away from me as possible.

it's already getting easier to breathe.

awake

I've had this dream every night I've slept since last friday:

it's pitch black and I'm opening my eyes, and I'm feeling really dizzy. I realize I'm outside, but I don't know why I'm there. it's dark, but not dark like night. dark like absence. there isn't a single sound and I feel like my ears don't exist anymore. I feel myself tilting around, but I either don't have arms or can't move them to help me balance. I'm just rooted to something by feet I can't feel and may not exist, swaying. nothing feels right.

I'm on the edge of something, something really, really tall. I can feel it in my body even if I can't see it or hear it. it makes me dizzier and I feel confused, out of control.

I feel my stomach heave into my chest, and I'm falling. everything has given way under me, and in the pitch blackness I can feel everything I've ever known rushing past my face. I strain to see, but I don't know if my eyes are closed or maybe that I don't have eyes anymore.

the bottom is approaching, and I can anticipate the hardness of it, and how fast I'm falling. it's a feeling of terror I can't even give thought to. and as everything in me turns completely out, I wake up, shivering in a cold sweat and lurching over to throw up.

it's to keep this dream away that I try and keep myself from falling asleep. 4:01 now, not too long before I can get up again.

any way you can, I guess

not that I have readers flocking to this imbecile blog or anything, but just out of curiosity, I ran a quick query on what people were searching for that led them to café bleu.

the overwhelmingly winning google search query? "pussy + cow"

whatever draws you in, I guess.

dumpster man

yesterday night I was walking home from the station, and although the area is perfectly safe, the block the station actually is on can sometimes creep into sketchville. it was like that last night when I got off the train, a little late, but made later, it seemed, by the fact that there isn't a single lamppost on that block.

I've walked that block a million times, twice a day, actually to and from work, and I don't usually think twice. but it was dark out, and unusual, I was the only person getting off.

the block is a short one, and at the end, the streets are well lit and there is usually some traffic. but there are some large trees on the way, and a couple of walls that lead into driveways. and it was out from behind one of these that what I thought was the dumpster man from mulholland drive lurched out at me.

now I know that it was just a very drunk man. and I've seen plenty of those, and dealt with plenty of them. but I could not care less what his story was. all I know is that I was alone and it was dark and this crazy man came out of nowhere and started grabbing me and even though he wasn't big, and he wasn't hurting me, I couldn't get away and I was really afraid.

we struggled for a bit, and I think I was too afraid to scream. or didn't even think of anything but trying to get away. and as we stumbled across the sidewalk, he tripped on a large root and momentary let go.

I ran.


I know this can happen anywhere, any time. but I really want to get out of this city.

11:45

I have to say, this is the most admirable defeat speech. and it makes me remember, for the first time during this entire election process, what made john mccain such an admirable and honorable man.

11:32

impressive.

9:04

texas has gone definitely red

8:46

this time, four years ago, DS and I were sitting in a bar, happily slurping down beers and munching away on burgers and fries, looking over at the numbers in blue on the flat screen monitor. and all that changed in a blur just 45 minutes later. so I'm not letting myself feel hopeful yet.

but what's up with that blue texas?

a touch of jinx

in 2000, eyes twinkling with the fervor of someone who sees, I worked on the fundraising team for ralph nader's campaign. even when he selected winona la duke as his running mate. of course, we all know how that turned out.

2004 rolled around and I threw my weight behind john kerry, working the campaign phones. I especially loved his choice of john edwards, hero to the old- and modern american, a man who had been putting his money where his mouth and politics were for over 20 years, as his running mate. november 4th, 11pm, we sat holding warm beers and cold chili cheese fries at tír na nÓg, bleaking counting the points rolling in the wrong direction.

2006. it's a new year and I've new hope in the attorney from north carolina who was going to reform economic, education and healthcare policies in a way that finally would make sense to the people who needed some sense offered them. for the first time I not only contribute time but money, and put both where my mouth is.

2008 and there is the smell of something new in the air. there's no way I'm going to touch this one. if there's something I've learned, it's to stay away. all I did was push a couple of buttons this morning, and say a prayer.

good to know

gregory peck was on the rowing team at berkeley. a fact that I find comforting. this, in a time when I need some comfort.

I vote obama, after all

back in february, I wrote about my thoughts on john edwards as he stepped away from his run for the presidency.

I can't even begin to tell you what the latest news has meant to me. it feels like such a personal betrayal, a breakdown of everything I wanted to believe in.

so instead, I'm going to let youtube say it for me:



thanks, bean, for the tip

rinse, repeat

they were airing this back in the 70s, when we were burning up fossil fuels for fun, just because we could!

ladies & children hair dressing

nothing, just that I love this building.

jackpot

it started off with a craving for mcvitie's tea biscuits and some cadbury milk bars. and a rumor that somewhere in the barren northwest of the city, there was a shop that sold them. and more.

so with just that information, and nothing more, we set off in neil's car. headed west, then north, zigging through the streets, pausing at potentials.

nearly an hour later, we were running out of steam, and so was the car. it was dark outside, and so we pulled into a sunoco gas station to regroup. and! just as we got out of the car, neil let out a yelp and motioned over. a mcvitie's sighting!

and lo, we walked into the sunoco convenience store, and feasted our eyes (and later our mouths) upon rows and rows of aero bars:


turkish delights and galaxy bars:

cadbury and bottles of lucozade:

and bags and bags of walker's salt & vinegar crisps!

and, o, the mcvitie's:
all in all, a worthwhile adventure.

a day in the life

I first picked up a day in the life of ivan denisovich in the 7th grade. there was something about it, that read so foreign and greyish-green compared with the smooth yellows and blues of early-century american literature, that it felt like everyone had been lying to me all those years. why weren't we reading this in english?

the cancer ward was next, and I reread that book until I could quote at length from it, making up reasons to if they didn't come naturally.

his books were the first that reached into some place in me I didn't have a name for, the place that drives me to look around at my world and work to leave an indelible mark in it, no matter how small.

and so, to a man who did leave his mark in it, smaller in some circles than in others. but indelible, definitely.

I love this photograph of him during his exile in vermont, he just looks like a communist:

alexander solzhenitsyn, 1975

ps: deacs, he died, in case you're wondering what this post is about.

the jam--in the city

in the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you:




I came about the jam totally backwards, starting first with paul weller, diving head first into the style council, and then somewhere around college, year 3, came up with This Is The Modern World in the Used bin at Amoeba.

put a thin, pale, shag-haired boy with thin wrists in a peg-legged suit and you'll always get 3 1/2 minutes of my attention.

Expectations

It humiliates me to admit this, but almost everything I know about love and relationships, I’ve gleaned off of 80s hair metal videos. Falling in love during long nights stretched out on fur in front of a marble-fronted fireplace. Passionate moments framed through blurry, mist-blotted windows. A painful breakup silhouetted in the headlights of a car parked in the rain. Making up over long, steamy kisses with the fog (machine) swirling around you.

In the end, does it mean anything at all if he’s not chasing after you, falling to his knees screaming your name while he rips off his shirt in the rain? And how will he know what love is if you’re not dancing for him on the hoods of your two jaguars parked in the driveway outside your English country home, which by the by, is being renovated on during the day by a troop of solidly built, long-haired and desperately woman-hungry musicians?

I never doubted for a moment that by this age, everything I knew would come into play and that I would be in love someone who looked startlingly like David Coverdale. A man who can bend that far back whilst yowling and wearing skintight leather pants BUT still laugh about it is surely the man of my dreams. All that hair and teeth and loudly declared adoration.

So why is it then, that nothing has lived up to the smoke and glitter of those early images? Instead of arguments that can be instantaneously resolved by my provocatively dancing around the room in stilettos and hot makeout sessions atop british luxury automobiles, I’m forced into endless conversations about trust and future and crap.

Someone hand me some scarves and an Aerosmith album, please. Seriously, I want my MTV.

summer list

5 things I swore I would do this summer, and still haven't:

1. go to the beach. or the shore. or wherever it is that I can set my blanket on the ground and lie down, listening to the ocean lapping at the edge of the earth.

2. get rid of the 15% extraneous crap in my life. that means you, pal.

3. learn to play "I Will" on the guitar.

4. go visit friends in california, like I say I'll do every year.

5. stop bleaching my hair blonde.

subway!

maybe I'm wearing the wrong bra

...because something seems to be going wrong here.

my way

huh?

I don't know what this is from, but I found it in a corner of my computer desktop. just thought I'd offer it up as a saturday tribute:

love is for losers

I suppose it's always tragic when a love story falls apart. or in this case, a beanie-baby filled marriage crumbles under the weight of infidelity. but still, it is one of the funniest things I've read in a while, and I thank the internet for laying it at my feet like a drowned worm after a rainstorm:

http://nomarriage.com/ebay.html