Yonder.--What high as that! We follow, now we follow.--

And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.

2010-02-16T22:19:00.009-05:00

Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show 2K10: Liveblogging the Terrier and Working Dogs groups

1. Why have I never heard of the Komondor? I want a Komondor.

This is what this dog ACTUALLY looks like. Am I being Punk'd?

2. Dog Show judges wear the most incredible clothes I have every seen. And by incredible, I don't mean "extraordinary" but rather, "farfetched, and preposterous."

SATIN PALAZZO PANTS. SATIN. PALAZZO.

3. The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show would be the perfect opportunity to use live first impressions as audio commentary. In other words, I think they would do well to have people like me as commentators. And I don't just mean people who don't know anything about dog breeds. I mean people who laugh uncontrollably at the facial expressions dogs make.

4. The Dandie Dinmont Terrier has confirmed that the Lisa Frank Ratio is in full effect:

Lisa Frank Ratio: a scientific calculation of cuteness in which the size of eyes and head are inversely proportional to size of body and feet.

5. Wiry-haired dogs are totally more boring than fluffy dogs. Except for the FRENCH BULLDOG MY [and Martha's] FAVORITE [finalist for Best in Show!]

[Francesca's just pissed because she lost to this bitch]

coasting down the winding road

2009-09-12T12:53:00.006-04:00

Autumn is a new school year and a new bevy of highly specific, relatively inconsequential [in the grand scheme of life and crap] research interests. Today I am collecting women's advice columns, circa 1896-1900, published in Southern newspapers like the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The illustrations!!:

Top Five Childhood Memories: The King of Pop edition

2009-06-27T15:29:00.009-04:00

because it really is the end of an era.

1. Taping Moonwalker off of TV [remember those days, eh] and watching the VHS at least once a week, for at least a year:

2. Appreciating every time he pulled off another successful "feature length music video" [and in part inspiring my love of all things epic and over-the-top in pop music/culture]:

3. Watching the Thriller video and watching Lauren be terrified of the "cat cweature" at the end, every time [and eventually accepting that I would never be coordinated enough to teach myself the dance]:

4. Kindling my lifelong sentimentalism for all things stop-motion animated [and all things Elephant Man-related?]:

5. Seeing Captain EO [a film that falls into the inexplicable and oft-neglected "space opera" genre] in 3D at Epcot and trying to catch Fuzzball every time he totally three-dimensionalized in front of my! seat:

A Wii bit uncomfortable?

2009-04-09T16:26:00.003-04:00

Most weekdays, I supplement my cardiovascular routines by working on my Wii Fit-ness. As many of my associates can attest, I am a strong advocate of this venue of electronic exercise. There are some days when the longest, most personal conversations I have are with the Wii Fit Balance Board. Good morning! Do you feel rested today? Some times it can take days or weeks for the results of your hard work to show, but keep at it! You’re doing great! Thanks, the Wii Fit.

ANYWAY.

On Wednesday mornings, the trash guys [Sorry, third wave feminism: the trash “individuals”] come to our house. For the past three weeks, I haven’t remembered this fact until I am exactly in the middle of my Wii Fit Super Hula Hoop session. When I look out the series of windows that are adjacent to the TV, stretching across the front of the house. And look at the trash guys, who are looking at me, looking like an idiot wiggling around with a pretend hula hoop. It is important to note here that from outside, you can’t see the TV OR the Wii Balance Board. And for three weeks, I haven’t been able to decide if it’s weirder to STOP hula hooping when we inevitably make eye contact, because there are dudes outside watching me try to perfect large, neat hip circles — or to KEEP hula hooping because, like a Nike commercial, nothing should get between me and my workout.

So far I have kept hooping.

Another year and then you'll be happy [Just one more year and then you'll be happy]

2009-03-31T17:34:00.002-04:00

I am a woman of discriminating taste.

Disenfranch[-Ch-Ch-Ch. . .hah-hah-hah-hah]ised

2009-02-11T17:07:00.025-05:00

A few weekends ago, I received a ticket to a radio station’s promotional music performance, whimsically entitled “Ludacrismas.” I attended this event not because I am particularly enamored with the hip hop stylings of Ludacris, but because it was 1) “VIP”, not to mention “free”, 2) ridiculously named, and 3) the sort of thing a character in a city-based sitcom might attend, with hilarious results. And even though Ludacris very clearly did not invest too much in this performance, as evidenced by the show’s duration [25 minutes] and the fact that he dealt exclusively in Now That’s What I Call Top Forty, Volume 97 greatest hits, I had a fabulous time. Heck, I even knew all the words to most of the selections, mostly because I went to the roller rink a lot when I was in seventh grade.

I realize now that this should have been my approach to the advance screening of Friday the 13th, the latest in Hollywood’s recent series of classic horror “re-envisionings.”

When I look back, I don’t know why I was excited about winning [free!] tickets to this pre-release screening [with trivia and stars from the CW!]. Orrr maybe I do. I was excited to be winning something and getting a taste of what my future film critic career will yield [seeing movies early and for free yes!] – but I was also, I realize now, translating my excitement into anticipation for a new film in a series I really like. After all, this is the team behind 2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which, in spite of the leeriness Michael Bay’s production credits should automatically inspire, I actually thought was kind of good – scary, even. So while similar projects in the recent past [cough, cough, Halloween Resurrection] have utterly massacred my relationship with formerly beloved horror canons [there is no way in HELL that Busta Rhymes could ever, in any universe, inflict harm on Michael Myers], for some reason I thought this would be different. Unfortunately, however, while Friday the 13th did not inspire the anger/disgust/inability to digest food that Resurrection triggered, it was overall a disappointingly flat and pointless film experience.

That Michael Myers is fierce!

Slasher series such as F13 tend, at this stage in pop culture context, to be characterized with an air of irreverence, and many of them even embrace this silliness: see Jason X, Bride of Chucky, etc. These films are made for fans, for people who have grown up with these films and can appreciate their relevance even in the face of missteps like Jason Takes Manhattan.* But what people tend to forget is that the originals of these series are often quite scary, quite good films. F13 Pts. 1 and 2, I would argue, are disarmingly paced, eerie, well-crafted slasher movies, with interesting soundtracks and effective suspense techniques. What I imagined Bay and co. would do in this most recent incarnation is capitalize on those good bits and filter them through some contemporary post-structural, post-Scream lenses. Instead, however, they apparently decided to make a porno.

I’m not here to untangle a knotty history of horror and sexuality in cinema. I ‘get’ that ridiculous female objectification and victimization in a sexual context is part and parcel of the slasher package. Friday the 13th, however, devotes more screen time to sex scenes [and weird, naked Gatorade commercials] than to anything else. And what’s more, these scenes don’t even set up any of Jason’s trademark creative destruction. [What a lot of F13 fans appreciate, I would argue, is how the series acknowledges its own ludicrismasness by having Jason kill people in ridiculous ways. There is a distinction here between Jason’s outrageous kill scenes and the traumatic, gristly violence that characterizes a lot of contemporary shock films.] It’s just young and dumb people having sex with each other, for a long time. Or naked wakeboarding together, in the sunset, for a long time. [Yes. Oops, retroactive spoiler alert. But considering that what I’ve spoiled is quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen on film in my entire life, I think you’ll recover.] I know that this charge could be leveled against a lot of films. But those films aren’t Friday the 13th, you know? Yes, a lot of stupid people have a lot of stupid sex throughout the 12 film series, but—at least in the beginning—Jason was still always scary. What’s disappointing to me is that these filmmakers, if they would have put in even an iota of effort, have a lot more to work with here than T and A and bowls and boners.

Maybe all of this absurd nakedness could be tolerable if it had been layered in with some actual tension, suspense, or attempt at fright. In fact, the only horror I could detect throughout the entire experience was on the part of the filmmakers, who seemed absolutely terrified of letting a shot linger in stillness or silence, or even linger for more than 3 seconds. In the few futile attempts to "reimagine" images from earlier films in the series, the sequences feel like they're running in fast-forward, hurrying towards some jolt that—stripped of any surmounting tension or misleading calm—barely even registers as a shock. As a viewer, the unlikelihood of gaining any visceral foothold in the horror movie experience is heightened by the glossy, spacious, and sleek "backwoods" setting. I was unaware not only of northern New Jersey's vast expanses of hillybilly-populated, silvery-misted jungles, but also that these shiny jungles are quite roomy and perpetually spotlit. In the earlier films, what always creeped me out about Jason Vorhees was how he lurked in the familiar, partially obscured in a dense undergrowth or darting across a corner of the frame. You never could be quite sure what you were seeing or where he might leap from. To clear up some of this confusion, the new F13 ensures that Jason gets plenty of long shots, dramatic lighting, and room to skulk, or glare ponderously.

let's give him something to stalk about.

I lost interest in the manuevers [sexual or otherwise] of any of the film's characters pretty quickly. I didn't even care how or if Jason would manage to get the best of them—almost didn't seem worth his time, you know? The more I reflect [and this has been a pretty ridiculously extended reflection on an experience that was almost entirely lackluster], I begin to think that my investment in the series does not make too much of a difference: even if I went into this film with an air of Ludacrismas, I would have still been bored... but maybe just less disappointed. Less jaded about how contemporary horror packaging seems to have lost all sight of what it means to really spook an audience, not just inundate them with i can't believe there's a naked wakeboarder shock value. Earlier, I described Friday the 13th as flat and pointless, which I realize is not entirely true: but the only things about the movie that aren't flat and pointless are the female leads' pervasive double d's.

*Trivia Time! Friday the 13th Pt. 8: Jason Takes Manhattan is my favorite, but this should in no way discredit any implied interpretive authority.

In defense of an underrated Christmas Film, Pt. I

2008-12-18T02:13:00.009-05:00

I am currently drinking tea, eating caramels, and watching Gremlins. Though 3 a.m. on a weekday is probably far too late to excuse any activities that don’t include either (1) an actual celebratory-type event, (2) actual other humans, or (3) actually, just being 12 at a slumber party, I feel perfectly okay about all of these things because I just completed my final [however half-assededly assembled] assignment of the semester, and it’s almost Christmastime.

So maybe it’s just the holiday-tinted rosy colored glasses talking, but I cannot BELIEVE how much of an underrated Christmas film Gremlins is. I might even go as far as to posit how much of an underrated cinematic experience Gremlins is—except I can’t think of anyone who could fail to appreciate at least a few of the film’s finer points of pop culture currency and/or fantastical appeal.

Though it’s directed by Joe Dante, who has helmed some of my dark horse favorites, Gremlins has the delightfully comforting narrative arc of a classic Spielberg joint [incidentally, I’m not sure if you can call anything a “joint” if it hasn’t been directed by Spike Lee.] I’ve turned it on because Lizzy posed a compelling Gremlins-based query earlier in the week [“Zack Galligan: hot or not?”] and I wanted to do some further research. Plus I love pretending mogwais are real, and I don’t care if means I’m a dork. As far as the Galligan hypothesis goes, so far I’m thinking he’s kind of a poor man’s William Ragsdale. [Unless William Ragsdale is a poor man’s Zack Galligan?! Which I guess depends on where your ultimate nostalgic sympathies lie.] At any rate, here are some great things about Gremlins:

The Mogwai [Gizmo, NOT the gremlins] – this is taking lovable, reality-challenging 80’s puppetry to new heights. As aforementioned, mogwais being real would make me happier, I think, than the real life incarnation of any other animatronic puppet. And again, it might be my exceptionally optimistic vacation self [full of caramels] talking, but when Gizmo starts to sing from his little box in the shadowy Chinatown “curiosities” shop [essay on Orientalism in Gremlins forthcoming], it just fills my heart with happiness. In short, it’s a genius work of fictional, robotic adorableness.
Corey Feldman AND Judge Reinhold – both are in this film. Which isn’t surprising, per se, but as something I had forgotten, it’s been a pleasant little discovery lending credence to the idea that Reinhold and/or Feldman were required to be in every movie ever made in the 80’s.
The score – the theme song for Gremlins is an American Movie Classic. Which might be why this movie is on AMC, even though it has Judge Reinhold and Corey Feldman in it.
Zack Galligan. The more I think about it, the more he is hotter than William Ragsdale.
I think the gremlins actually kill people? At least, one of them just did a number on the science teacher. This isn’t a great thing about Gremlins in and of itself as much as it’s a pretty impressive feat in a movie that manages to still come across as nostalgic and dear. The confusingly sinister ambience is a great instance of dark comedy-meets-fantasy-meets-horror-meets-holiday-family-film. Are you listening, Four Christmases?? Honestly, it’s like nobody tries anymore…
Keep him out of the sunlight. Keep him away from water. And whatever you do, do NOT feed him after midnight. This is not only the stuff crappy tee shirt slogan writers’ dreams are made of, but also a just a classic gem of cinematic Americana that I hope will benefit me someday in bar trivia.
Did I mention how stinking adorable Gizmo is? He’s like a precursor to Wall-E, without as much stigma about the planetary destruction humankind will inevitably wreak in our not-so-distant future.
Christmas – I forgot until the opening credits rolled that this was a Christmas movie. In general, I am a pretty consistent supporter of Christmas movies [except for when they’re not even TRYING to wring out any authentic visceral reactions. It’s a Christmas movie, for chrissake, it’s not like its HARD to make people feel whimsical and lovey, but Four Christmases? Really??], but I think the Christmas-ness of Gremlins is often overshadowed, by, well, the gremlins. This film really capitalizes, though, on the creepy yet simultaneously twinkly and magical things you can do with nighttime snowfall, icicles, Christmas lights, carols and phonographs, and tinsel.

To conclude, Gremlins has a lot more going for it than just the gremlins, even though Zack Galligan, alas, made very little of his post-Gremlins career. Ultimately, I just always find it encouraging when movies I loved as a child still have the power to enchant, and when I remember that things can be funny, endearing, and traditional without insulting our intelligence or appreciation of excellently crafted sight, sound, and color. [The gremlins just fell in the swimming pool. Chiaroscuro awesome!]

inexpensive wine (i buy it all the time)

2008-12-08T23:11:00.006-05:00

This season, the holiday preseason, is always a toughie. Fortunately for you, I just remembered how awesome puppies are.

So, for the sake of your sanity, if you need to pretend to be doing something important [but actually REALLY need to look at some pictures/videos of adorable puppies], please feel free to use this time and space for your purposes. Merry [early] Christmas!

ladies, what is the deal?

2008-12-06T15:46:00.004-05:00

I mean, I KNOW this kind of goes without saying, but can we talk about this particularly strange and confusing “retrending?” Call me crazy, but didn’t uggs go in style AND out of style like, five years ago? How on earth did this clearly illogical ensemble manage to reemerge?

When asked recently about what college kids are like these days, I smarmily replied that I really don’t interact or concern myself with undergrads so I don't know what they're like [a shameless, futile effort to make my late-sleeping, daytime television-watching lifestyle seem equitably grown-up when compared to my actually-working friends]. Anyhow it made me look around a little more when scuttling across from library to coffee to library. Oh good, I haven't been missing much because EVERY FEMALE IS WEARING EXACTLY THE SAME THING [wait, am I in 2004?]: Ugg boots, black tights, oversized college hoodie? Ladies, what is the deal? You are obviously not concerned with a consistent body temperature, as one part of you is clearly less warm than the other two parts. And unless I’m not up to speed in societally desirable proportions, there doesn’t seem to be much of a gesture towards aesthetics. Are there hot celebs running around somewhere in this ensemble? Are tights sufficient in a “No Shirt, No Pants, No Service” dress code? What am I missing?

Final thought, do we think this is equatable to the hyper-speed recycling of ludicrously, universally unflattering trends by [arguably] fashion-conscious vendors?

google goggles

2008-10-28T18:26:00.005-04:00

Incredible.

now if they could only make this happen on my cell phone...

speaking of links, Missed Connections = my current favorite distraction... slllaaasshhhhhh infatuation? i really want to find myself on one. i feel like it's the only way i can say, "philadelphia, i have arrived." this one in particular has been a lingering favorite, probably because it reminds me of a dinosaur comic...

p.s. i want to emphasize my considerable paranoia that i have been noticed and judged by my more scholarly peers for publicly blogging, reading Missed Connections, and looking at dinosaur comics at the library.

when I chirp, shawty, chirp back

2008-09-30T16:57:00.003-04:00

As per uzsh, I have lost a great deal of my blogoggling initiative what with the reintroduction of school work into my life. Oh no, that doesn’t mean that I’m too BUSY for extracurricular writing, as I certainly make ample time for gchatting and copious facebook exploration of photo albums belonging to individuals who are “friends” only in the most tenuous of electronic terms – I just can’t open a Word document without feeling guilty that I’m not responding to themes of excess and economy in Shakespeare’s comedies [with textual examples.] Sometimes I can’t remember why I thought this was a good idea.

Today is an assistantship day, which means I don’t think about my schoolwork at all and just try to focus on the work that is paying for me to go here. It’s nice to have a break from all the junk that concerns my own scholarship, but it’s also funny because I am ridiculously unequipped to be doing the work I’ve been assigned. E.g. today, for some zany reason, I find myself proofreading citations in a manuscript about medieval piety poems, structural manifestations of the Incarnation in Christian charters, etc. I don’t understand it either. But in short: I have to read a lot of Middle English, which I cannot read, which amounts to me making up words in my head for the symbols on the page, which I then sing to myself as gibberish songs that I compare to the gibberish songs in the manuscript. It’s EXTRA funny to me [but probably to no one else] because I’m listening to Girl Talk, and all I can think of is hip hop Middle English poetry. As in, “damn that honey is a ryjt fyn wel fayre mayde!”

Annnnnnd I am officially lame. This is what happens.

mistress of the dark

2008-09-09T00:03:00.008-04:00

As the first hints of autumn start nudging, I am digging our new digs more and more. Granted, it rains on the inside when it rains on the outside sometimes, and tenant-landlord relations leave MUCH to be desired. But all and all, the swishing leaves of the trees that line the block [which I can hear in the bathroom in the morning through the skylight] and the lantern on the porch swaying in the evening, and our bench and stoop... it's all quite lovely.

But if I'm going to be completely honest with myself, one of the REAL best things about the house is its location. In particular, its location relative to Eastern State Penitentiary [we can SEE it from the house!], which is home to one of the country's greatest [albeit overpriced, cheesy, historically inaccurate, and impossible to get into] haunted houses.

But it's in a PANOPTICON, for pete's sake, and besides, I am just so all about Halloween and haunted things. And as these leaves start a'crumbling, well, it's just getting that much closer to the witching hour, and I am PSYCHED.

And as if to officially ring in our first Halloween in our new terrifyingly close to the haunted prison house, this year's TERROR BEHIND THE WALLS is going to be out-of-control sensational. Yes. Everything you've heard is true: the Mistress of the Dark herself ELVIRA is going to be at the Pen for the Halloween celebration [AND revelry to follow at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia Hotel!]

I can't even begin to wrap my head around what this is going to be like, but I advise all to check out Elvira.com just to get an idea. Or even just to check out the theme song, which is both rocking and unbelievable. How the heck old is Elvira these days, anyway?! I can't decide if I am impressed/surprised that she is still kicking, or considering the Penitentiary Haunted House a HUGE downgrade for the Mistress' biggest night of the year. So anyway, if you like things that are campy and want to see some plastic surgery that defies the laws of physics, you might want to attend some of these craaaazy Halloween shenanigans. And then you can stop by our house for some pumpkin cookies or something!

Also, what should I be for Halloween? Last year saw the implementation of some major fake blood, which was pretty fun, so I might want to incorporate that again, somehow. I don't know if I could exactly pull off an Elvira homage, but maybe a Zombie iPod? Or Bloody Sarah Palin?

the music our collisions make

2008-08-24T23:49:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow I start school [school!] again, and the thought of it is already wrenching my nerves. In short I am kind of terrified.

Though there is also this, and I feel there is at least this on which to cling:

But the poetry of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for hours after it – who can describe that? It is so easy for an Englishman to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of “passing emotion,” and to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough, and that men and women are personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate impulse too highly. We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the doors of heaven may be shaken open. To Helen, at all events, her life was to bring nothing more intense than the embrace of this boy who played no part in it. He had drawn her out of the house, where there was danger of surprise and light; he had led her by a path he knew, until they stood under the column of the vast wych-elm. A man in the darkness, he had whispered: “I love you” when she was desiring love. In time his slender personality faded, the scene that he evoked endured. In all the variable years that followed she never saw the like of it again.

- Forster, Howards End

Said, if you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

2008-08-20T00:00:00.010-04:00

One thing I’ve learned a lot about since moving is Stephen Starr, whose name and lore I had never heard before living in Philadelphia. “That’s a great restaurant… is it a Stephen Starr?” “No, we’re going to the other ice cream shop – the one by the new Stephen Starr?” “It was great, but no Stephen Starr, you know?” I didn’t know. But now I am getting the idea. Stephen Starr = stylish and ambience-drenched dining and entertainment establishments that have good food and are almost affordable and manage to come across as cool and not snobby. The whole Starr thing is just one of those instances where you feel like the last person to find out about something, and then when you do, it’s like you can’t escape it. Like Rachel Ray, or the Purpose Driven Life.

So anyhow, my mother and sister and I were planning a [very brief] beach vacation, and we decided to go to Atlantic City because its cheaper and more alcoholic and gambly than its Jersey shore neighbors. I was excited because I had never been in a casino and figured it would be weird and entertaining if nothing else [it was], but I let everyone else handle the details. So naturally my mom hears about this new and fancy hotel on the beach and its wildly cheap opening week promotional rates, and of COURSE it’s a Stephen Starr hotel.

So we went to AC and stayed at this über-everything mod 60’s style luxe hotel establishment, complete with retro-modern couches all over the place and faux rococo details and all the expensive wallpaper patterns I’ve been ogling for the past year on design blogs. It was pretty great, especially when I spent the entire time pretending I was sort of person to stay in luxurious hotels that actually have a design scheme and unifying theme.

okay, so this pool? pretty fance, but totalllly not as huge as it looks here. also worth mentioning is that you have to picture this space teeming with small children and construction sounds - as most of the swinging and stylish amenities of this future casual-hip Venetian-modern hot spot aren't built yet...

But other than that, Atlantic City is very much how you remember it, if you’ve been there in the past 35 years. Casinos are SO WEIRD. There’s like 20 different identical places to choose from [the gold leaf classical vibe of Cesar’s Palace? or the Branson, Missouri-esque Bally’s?] And when we finally picked a place where I “felt lucky”, I felt like I was going to have an epileptic seizure. Slots are crazy. Can you imagine people spending an entire DAY there? I tried to shove a wrinkled ten through the change converter [I trust myself to play nothing but nickel slots] and literally was bowled over by a worn-looking over-Blonde who just HAD to break her HUNDRED dollar bill for a game of Kino. Insane.

To put things into perspective, it took me two hours to play [and lose] five dollars in penny and nickel slot machines. Which may mean that I was “too careful”, but also means I only spent five dollars and would probably die of smoke inhalation and overstimulation if I would actually try to do this sort of thing for realsies. As far as I can tell, the trick with playing the slots is to pick machines with pictures of stuff on them that you like. There’s really no other rhyme or reason to it – all the games are pretty much the same except for the sounds that ring when you win or lose 15 cents. I played Enchanted Unicorn, Jeopardy, Alien Resurrection, and Dolphin Magic slot machines before settling on Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler, which was ridiculous and funny for obvious reasons. I doubled my five dollars on the Free Spin Slot Car Bonus Round and enjoyed the animated Kenny Rogers headshots and ricochet sounds for about a half hour before that wily rogue snatched it all away in a matter of seconds. That’s Vegas, baby. I mean, that’s Vegas’ snarky and dingier East Coast cousin… baby.

I guess it’s fitting that I learned my greatest lesson of the weekend from the Gambler himself:

Islands in the stream, that is what we are

No one in between, how can we be wrong?

Sail away with me. to another world

And we rely on each other, uh huh

From one lover to another, uh huh.

Uhhhh huh. But seriously, if anyone is going to AC anytime soon, let me know. I can feel that casino glitter calling my name, and I think maybe a few more hours and I could break even. Seriously!

____________________

an important afterthought, inspired by staying up all night to watch an Ace of Cakes marathon:

Ace of Cakes is one of my favorite shows on television…nay, things about LIFE, ever. One thing I wonder about, though, is NOT if they are really cakes [I know they are really cakes. I’ve seen enough Food Network fondant draping in my day to understand how gum paste works], but how Chef Duff manages to employ exclusively mild-mannered and low-speaking girls and boys. They work in a novelty CAKE SHOP that has its own REALITY SHOW. But somehow every cake decorator on the show uses the same monotone, all the time, no matter what they are doing or how sad/frustrated/happy they may be. I still find them all entertaining and delightful, but I just wonder how people can be so even-tempered… especially in the presence of so much sugar. I guess it’s a good thing, though, because a more excitable human [me, in my wildest dreams… which would also include a pet mini horse] would probably be knocking over all the delicate marzipan all the time.

maroon, yellow, blue, gold, and gray

2008-08-04T00:35:00.002-04:00

This morning I woke up for the first time in my new house in Philadelphia. I could hear leaves rustling in a morning breeze, and it was so lovely. In spite of the piles of mess everywhere, I was really excited for the new day.

So even though I am getting acclimated to the weight of academic anxiety and sharply spiking financial concerns, trying to figure out the balance between city awareness and paranoia, and determining how to fit 37 dresses and 29 pairs of shoes into a crumbling plaster trapezoid-shaped closet, I was feeling pretty good.

So I decided to shuck all pretense of being a local and run up the steps of the art museum.

And it felt great.

I'm talkin' 'bout sharkin'!

2008-07-30T22:04:00.004-04:00

Jaws is one of my favorite movies because I’ve seen it so many times. I find it interesting that it isn’t the other way around. If anyone ever claims to have never seen Jaws, it is certainly not due to any fault of the networks because Jaws is on ALL THE TIME. If you have never seen it, you have never spent a Saturday morning channel-surfing in your jammies on your parents’ couch with a bowl of Pops—because Jaws was definitely on then.

I’ve loved Jaws since I was little, waiting with delight until the moment when I could chime in, “It’s just bluefish! It’s a school of bluefish!” But I’ve only more recently allowed myself to admit that it’s a favorite. After all, how many movies are there that you can watch with glee EVERY TIME they are on? Without even trying, or – now that I think of it – ever making it a point to watch Jaws all the way through, I know all the words. I absently read a magazine while my mom pages through a photo album, both of us intoning, “This is not a boat accident! And it wasn't any propeller, and it wasn't any coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper! It was a shark,” and “Michael, get out of the water!” [if you were expecting “We’re going to need a bigger boat”… please. Child’s play.]

Anyhow, as if TBS and TNT and AMC and USA needed an excuse, Jaws is on a bunch right now because it’s Shark Week, one of my favorite of all weeks [for reasons that go without saying, I presume.] I don’t really have a point to all this, other than to say that watching Jaws in the summer is a snapshot of contentment. And isn’t it strange that a movie can become a favorite simply because it’s good enough to be watchable every time it’s on?

Okay, FINE. I’ll say some things about why Shark Week is awesome. It’s been on since the 80’s and has been gaining momentum ever since. I can think of at least 5 Facebook status messages that have to do with the greatness of Shark Week. While I appreciate Discovery’s current efforts to integrate Shark Week with their now successful line of evening programming [did you see Mike Rowe rip open up that Greenland shark!? Wild.], I DO sense that Shark Week is losing a bit of its scientific integrity. Last night some guy was dressed up as a scuba clown trying to get a shark to bite him. Something tells me that isn’t a highly sophisticated experiment. Didn’t Shark Week used to be a little more, oh, I don’t know, modest? That being said, I won’t be happy until someone rides a whale shark.

oooh wooooooooooooo

p.s. is there anyone who doesn't secretly like Jaws 4? Even just a little?

why i love McSweeney's Recommends

2008-07-11T10:09:00.005-04:00

My life's greatest vocational quest is to write for The Believer. But I find the whole rest of that Eggersian outfit pretty much incredible too. McSweeney's Recommends, in which the writers of my favorite online literary blogoggery continually compile a list of stuff they like, is one of my favorite distractions ever. I feel wildly validated by people who fulfill my life's greatest vocational quest liking the same music and food and web time-wasters as I do - AND I discover without fail some of the best gems of life and cultural fascination that I never would have found on my own.

Case in point: Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh, which is the book I've dreamt about writing myself for the past five years but which Daniel Radosh already wrote with a totally dead-on-apt approach. I am definitely ordering it off of Amazon ASAP - and I imagine my reaction to it will me a lot like my reaction to Chuck Klosterman: a tumultuous blend of complete accord and appreciation and wild jealousy that someone got to these topics first [and voiced them more succinctly and wittier than I ever could.] Except even more so because the Christian pop culture world is such a fabulously rich and bizarre artifact, a widely-untapped source of cultural commentary that people of my very specific socio-cultural background have been immersed in since childhood. Which is to say, I'm pretty sure Radosh will say a LOT of things I think, and I will be both happy that these things are well-said and annoyed that they were said before I could get there. e.g. this interview quote from Radosh: "If a pop culture that genuinely reflects Jesus's teachings of brotherhood and humility can win mindshare from A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila, I think we'd all be better off." Yeah.

Remind me sometime to talk about the whole interesting urbanite-hipster post-CCM-campfire-evangelism subset of our youth generation. Fascinating stuff.... oh wait, THAT'S been done already too. But seriously, Prodigal Jon's Stuff Christians Like is pretty great, in a funny because it's true sort of way with a refreshing, genuine [not saturated in sarcastic cynicism] approach to stuff a TON of Christians like. And I think its already-prolific catalogue is a testament [ha!] to the vast number of us culturally active and discerning people of faith floating around the internets these days.

ANYWAY, until the book arrives, I've also been occupying myself with the Rapture Ready blog, which is excellent and hysterical. And this is why I love McSweeney's Recommends. I can find things like an archive of 1970's Christian comic books, including "Paul : A Close Encounter of a Real Kind" and an AMAZING Johnny Cash testimonial comic[!?] apparently written by the Man in Black himself. Phenomenal.

p.s. 7/11!! Happy free Slurpee day Happy free Slurpee day!

I’m supposed to be packing

2008-06-23T14:57:00.003-04:00

but for some reason it’s more difficult than I expected. After all, I am excited for a new place, a new city, a new set of vocational and academic pursuits, and a new outlook on life every morning – one where I don’t hit the snooze button eighteen times… hopefully. The thing is, I never used to be a snooze button person. In college I was a regimented 8-hours-of-sleeper, meaning that I could sleep eight hours at a time, and that was about it. I would just wake up after that. I rarely got [or get] eight hours of sleep, but the point is that I could usually wake up when my alarm went off once, and know that I had to get up, and just do it. The promise of coffee as soon as I could climb out of my jammies and into real people clothes was mostly all I needed. But all of that changed when I got a job I hated going to last summer, and it still didn’t even change back when I traded it for a job I liked instead.

This is something I tell myself to feel better about the future. Through experience, I know that school makes me crazy, alllllllmost literally, as I steadily accumulate more than my share of wild-eyed absent-minded ramblings and obsessive neuroses, and enter into periods of mind-racing insomnia and bi-weekly mental meltdowns. I have certainly enjoyed a year away from these things. But at the same time, I still used to be able to get up on time, and I think it’s because there was always something to get up for—whether it was a friend to see by the mailboxes, or a new song on my ipod for the bike ride to campus, or even a paper to finish and hand in before noon… because as crazy as school makes me, it still makes me feel vital and happy and accomplished and ALIVE and like I am doing what I should be.

So as I procrastinate and procrastinate with the packing up of my Harrisburg year, I think about waking up and sincerely being happy that I am awake, and excited for the day to come. But it’s still slow going. I know it’s a good thing we have going here, and I am very sad to leave it—even if I am mooching here for another month, squatting in a claim shanty corner of Liz’s not-big-enough-for-two bedroom on an army cot, my term here *technically* ended last weekend… I admire the so many people I know who embarked on more solitary exciting journeys after graduation, and I know that I probably would never have survived such a thing. I never trust myself not to be lonely. And I am pretty sure that even if my job/life pursuit was something stellar, I would still be lonely if I wasn’t with my friends.

Yesterday, I biked the entire Green Belt—a 20-mile ring around the city that weaves through some of its more forgotten corners—on a wildly impractical beach cruiser, which is one of those cases of style-over-functionality to which I often fall susceptible. It was the perfect cap to a perfect weekend, and tt was lovely and glorious to be out in the summer with friends, feeling worn out but accomplished and happy by the time we made it back to the river and home. It reminded me again that I’m glad to live here, and glad to have this year. I want to always be this thankful for having laughter every day because I know not everyone has been this lucky. This is why packing has been difficult.

fake plastic trees [in a STUNNING antique ceramic arrangement!]

2008-06-17T16:06:00.004-04:00

When we finally found our house to rent [a dream house… a house to make up for all house-hunting missteps and early morning bleary eyes from late night obsessive sessions on craigslist… I may be exaggerating, but it’s pretty great!], I thought that might be it—I might actually be able to focus on life again, devote needed time to friends and family without the lingering suspicion that the perfect apartment was being posted right now and would be gobbled up in seconds if I didn’t check immediately! Right now! Go!

I should have known myself better. Incessant craigslisting has been of course replaced by pervasive daydreaming of the eight million floorplan options for out living room, scouring the internets for the perfect [and perfectly cheap] slipcover for my inherited comfortable-yet-black leather couch, purchasing impressively high thread count sheets, and emailing .jpgs of fabric swatch to my roommates, who don’t care very much about fabric swatch .jpgs.

I know we’re just renting, and I know it’s not long term—and I also know how cheesy I think “nesting” is, and how much I’ve made fun of it in the past… but I can’t help it. I think I allowed myself to get into the mindset of, “This is it. This is game time, design style.” I’ve always been into decorating and crafts and style stuff, but until now it has been dorms and college budgets and charmingly pre-furnished intentional community living spaces. Don’t get me wrong, with the back-to-school season very well nigh in a wildly expensive new urban center, I am still very soundly on a college budget—but that doesn’t mean it’s not time to rip off that sticky tack and put those posters into frames, for heaven’s sake.

As I said, I mildly hate the idea of nesting: “housewifery,” big weekend trips to the Home Depot, china hutches and coordinated napkin rings. I make fun of people on facebook for such things. I’d like to think I’m still more pup than yup, blowing my cash on concert tickets and sushi and shoes instead of wall tapestries. But here I am, reading Better Homes and Gardens in the check-out line and looking at SLIPCOVERS in my FREE TIME… and all it took was a signed lease.

And do you know what would make it all easier? An effing registry, that’s what. Select a pre-packaged design scheme [nouveau-modern-regency?!?], some colors, and throw the whole thing baby and bathwater onto amazon.com for someone else to buy for you. Don’t worry, I know that’s not TECHNICALLY how it works, but I still think I’d feel less like I had to find “perfect” things if they were all part of a big list I put together all at once.

Here’s a question: How comes people who aren’t getting married but who are still moving to new houses can’t have gift registries without looking like huge jerks? Again, don’t worry – I’m not going to create my own gift registry. But maybe this crafting and nesting instinct is all part of a post-post-modern anti-traditional master plan, after all? As in, to hell with husbands and wives, I’m going to have a kickass antique flea market china hutch NOW, and the only china it will display are my skull shot glasses. Man, I’m going to have SUCH an awesome dowry... sure to attract only the finest of suitors and beaus. Bonus!

fashion-show, fashion-show, fashion-show-at-home

2008-05-27T15:46:00.014-04:00

It officially feels like summer, complete with a total lack of ambition for anything but swimming pools and ambrosia salad. I’ve noticed a great deal of contention about ambrosia salad in recent years, as most humans apparently ignore all laws of reason and think that it’s gross [perhaps their palates cannot fully embrace the complication of so many different textures of deliciousness?] For the most part I am okay with my waning motivation, except for one nagging really cool thing that I can’t seem to make myself do: I had a paper conditionally accepted to a journal I really like [i.e. “we dig this idea, as long as you change everything about it and oh yeah, actually have a point to what you’re saying”], but for the life of me I can’t make myself re-edit it to meet the requirements. What the beans is wrong with me. I literally spend my entire workday with Word documents and little supervision, so what’s keeping me from working on it and effectively furthering my vocational goals? I really do not know—and I spend a considerable part of every day [when I could be doing productive life things] wondering why this is the case… I’m thinking with all of this brain-pureeing interwebs time I’ve been getting, maybe I really do need healthy human admonition in order to be a normal human again. So if you see me and want to yell at me to stop being such a lazy internet creep and start being a bright young go-getter, by allllll means…

It officially feels like summer because it was FINALLY consistently sunny and warm out this entire weekend for the first time EVER this post-winter. We sold used books amongst the proliferations of wrought garden art and shabby chic wall hangings and cat-themed deguerrotypes at Artsfest in the Hbg. It was grimy, dusty, and sweaty but otherwise thoroughly enjoyable “work.” As in, we somehow managed to sell over a thousand used books [including the autobiography of Johnnie Cochran, an entire collection of Shirley MacLaine self-help volumes, and coloring books with a lot of the pages already scribbled over] in the course of three days by lounging in the sun on our front stoop whilst listening to music and eating funnel cake. It was all things that are good. Things I got: some books from my 2008 reading list that I would probably have accrued major library late fees on [Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and a pictorial history of carnival glass that will be important later], sunburn exclusively on my left shoulder, a lot of anecdotes from old men about history books I don’t care about, and, surprisingly, some valuable life lessons… about talking to strangers and selling things.

Now, I don’t consider myself an inherently outgoing or very easily accessible kind of gal, especially when it comes to dealing with the public or mass social situations. But, as we had a bajillion books to sell and I certainly didn’t want to carry them all back inside, I was doing my best, as we all were, to be charming and conversational and appropriately encouraging that yes, you probably do need the entire History of World War II Fighter Planes box set, and no, it doesn’t lose value if the covers have been partially gummed by an errant toddler. Some of us are better than these things than others, and I have to say that this weekend only further confirmed my suspicion that I should probably stick to more “behind the scenes” avenues of work and service. Or maybe I was just destined to have two of the weirdest human interactions of my life. For one, of the 8 or so roommates and friends selling books this weekend, I was the only one to be robbed. In broad daylight. By a seven year old. Who stole two adult [not racy, but meant for adults] novels, one of which was entitled Forbidden Knowledge. While her mother shrieked at her, loudly, from half a block away:

Small child [pushing baby carriage full of dolls]: Can I have some books?

Child’s mother: Get over here NOW! NOW!

Me: [Looks at child. Then at child’s mother.]

Small child: [Holds up Forbidden Knowledge.] What’s this one?

Child’s mother: Get over here NOW!

Me: We’ve got some kids’ books over here… …

Small child: No, I think I like this kind. [Takes Forbidden Knowledge and a science fiction novel, runs to mother who doesn’t even ASK where or how she ended up with this pile of big strangely-titled adult fiction…]

Me: . .. ….

AND THEN. If that wasn’t enough, I also was delivered what might be the most dramatic verbal berating I have ever received. From a crazy woman at a used book sale. Outside a church. Regarding the pictorial history of carnival glass:

Crazy woman: [picks up book that due to its cover art [obviously] is one of our most-discussed selections]

Me: Oh, that’s my favorite! I love the dog on the cover.
Crazy woman: Now WHY would you think I would care about that DOG?! [tone escalates]

Me: .. … . .

Other customers and friends: ... .. ...

Crazy woman: [louder] I could NOT care LESS about that DOG. I am interested in STEUBEN GLASS, NOT in that dog. [sustained glare]

Me: . … . [agape]

Louie and Liz [respectively]: Oh, God. and, Is this really happening?

Crazy woman: [continued glare] I just HATE IT when people make presumptions. ESPECIALLY WOMEN.

Me: … …. .

Crazy woman: [gathers stack of books, drops them in a heap in the middle of other browsing customers, runs across the road to embrace her possibly-inebriated swaying lover.]
Me:

In conclusion, from now on I sell anything I need to sell online. Also, I need some aloe. And ambrosia. And maybe a swimming pool. And what exactly do you think that chihuahua is looking at?

Been spendin' most our lives, livin' in this hypochondriac's paradise

2008-05-21T11:23:00.008-04:00

Noticing on my newsfeed that Google has added yet another application to subsidize every organizational aspect of my being into a g-product, I just HAD to check out Google Health. After all, I’m a pretty enthusiastic supporter of this whole open source explosive web of streamlined mega-connectedness [aka Gmail, Gchat, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Picasa, Picasa Web, Google Maps, iGoogle, Blogspot, Google Books, Google Earth, etc…]. Finding a new [free] place to keep all of my things and super-connect them to every other thing is one of my favorite things to do.

Google Health is an online storage space for your personal health records. What’s interesting in my case is that I don’t really HAVE any personal health records – or if I do they are still in my parents’ lockbox or the hands of my pediatrician, since I have yet to actually utilize the personal health insurance I’ve obtained since I was forced out of parental dependency status. So looking around the site, I couldn’t actually do much of anything: I plugged some data into my health profile [age, height...ish, weight….estimate, blood type?...I’ll have to call my mom…], realized I didn’t have any medical records to import, and then moved on to “Medications” and “Conditions.” And here’s where I actually stumbled upon something I wanted to talk about with you all.

Google Health helps you out by providing a ridiculously expansive list of conditions that you can say you have. As a relatively robust young lass, I couldn’t really think of any pressing health problems, so I found myself looking up “barotitis media”, which is why my ears don’t pop on airplanes and which is probably NOT A REAL MEDICAL CONDITION. I thought it wasn’t on the list because it’s just a thing that happens to some people, especially when they have allergies, but then I found it under “airplane ear.” Phew. In my hunting for barotitis I happened to notice that “Blackheads” was on the list. Like, having blackheads. As a medical condition. [Incidentally, blackheads comes before Bubonic Plague. Can you actually HAVE the Bubonic Plague, if you’re alive after 1350?]

Other “conditions”: Hand pain [a little vague?], Headaches – ice cream [really?], Marijuana intoxication, Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder [yes! I KNEW it was a real problem!], age spots, hypochondria [ha!], eye redness [see Marijuana intoxication], wrinkles, insect bites, and stretch marks.

In conclusion, Google Health is going to be wildly popular because it fulfills every hypochondriac’s dream of self-diagnosis with wild abandon, and it even tickles the fancy of the average human who wants to be taken seriously for every minorly misperforming function of the body. I’m all for power to the people, but I fear we may be breeding harder better faster stronger overprotective moms, even MORE women with body image issues, and more of those jerky kids who use their “medical conditions” to score 1 bedroom dorms and get out of gym class.

I’m thinking about the future, when doctors might actually check out patients’ records on Google Health – and be inundated with misinformed self-diagnoses [“Now it says here that you’re suffering from Quincke's edema…”] and detailed accounts of “calf pain with exercise” and “vomiting after partaking in Gallon Challenge” [not a real one, but you can enter your own symptoms and add them, too!]

This whole endeavor, if nothing else, has encouraged me to start generating some real medical records - so if I die and no one can find any trace of me except for my Google identity, they might have an idea of who I was and what might ACTUALLY have happened. And perhaps more importantly, I ought to use up the perks of this benefits package before I lose it. It's about time I had that pesky "unequal pupil size" checked out...

but i saw you leave and crawl into a bed of broken windows

2008-05-16T12:21:00.006-04:00

A Friday narrative of what I’m thinking about

After what will amount to exactly one year and 14 days in the “real world” of full-time professional employment, I’m returning to Studentsville, Population: Me and Everybody Else Who Doesn’t Like Working. Kind of an oversimplification, but also kind of true? I mean, I would say that I knew I wanted to go back to school beyond the shadow of a doubt in ohh, say, September? And as much as I like to be confident in my stick-to-itness and general real life competencies, I am kind of terrible at working. Some people such as parents would probably say, “Welp, get used to it. This is the Real World” and they’re not talking about degenerate reality television but the commonly-propagated belief that you will probably hate your job and you’ll eventually learn to get over it and that’s no reason to drop out of the race. But I wasn’t bad at school, and like I said, I’m a pretty lame employee – and for the sake of my ego, I’d like to think it’s not because I’m lazy but because I’m supposed to be learning and reading and not wearing business casual clothes. And really, this is all a supplementary argument to the more accurate explanation that I really, really miss academia and think that is where I can ultimately do the most good and where I want to pursue my actual life’s vocation. But as of this summer, I am officially a graduate student – which means free gym membership, student movie prices [as if I ever stopped using my old undergrad i.d. card anyway…], sneakers and jeans, and no health insurance.

What with this whole big life change happening this summer, I’m also currently immersed in the heady and intimidating world of apartment searching in a major metropolitan region. A great deal of time is spent scouring craigslist and worrying about ending up in a mice hole full of mice and ghosts and no washer/dryer. The rest of my time devoted to this endeavor is spent dreaming about how exciting it will be to live in Philly—as opposed to Harrisburg, which is really a lovely place to live but does not have things like venues and a zoo and Urban Outfitters and a healthy population of handsome scholarly graduate students who want to go to venues and zoos and Urban Outfitters.

It’s Cazh Fri, and I’m wearing my sweet octopus shirt made by this guy. Don’t know if you had heard, but colossal squids have been a hot topic lately, as one of the world’s only intact specimens was thawed and dissected for the first time last month in

New Zealand

. Because this guy is really into giant and/or colossal squids, I sent her the link to the dissection project’s blog.In the age of blog lingo kind of becoming validated as its own linguistic style, it’s surprisingly interesting to get this style report from squid dissectors. Something else I learned is that there is surprising number of blogs about squids:
http://www.squidblog.com/
http://squid.us/
http://www.squidsquid.com/

a lot to be glad for

2008-05-09T12:37:00.003-04:00

Rock Plaza Central with Plants and Animals
World Cafe Live
Wednesday, May 14
8 p.m.

anybody want to go??!?

plants and animals
rock plaza central

i feel embarassingly validated.

2008-05-08T12:03:00.007-04:00

For the past few weeks I've been getting wayyyy into steampunk, an interest piqued by the appearance of some steampunk'd crazy-looking modified techmology on someorother blog I was distracting myself with. [e.g. this Mac on the steampunkworkshop blog...] The whole genre/style/lifestyle/strange role playing game jam is new to me, but I think I’ve always been kind of into it fashion-wise without knowing it had a name. As in, I always thought the style of the Time Machine, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, BTTF 3, The Prestige, and [gulp] Wild Wild West starringWillSmith was cool, and I’m interested in “gaslight romance” Victorian era storylines. Sensing the foreseeable nerdery of the whole endeavor, I kind of kept it under wraps except in a few private conversations and emails - but now [and I am aware that I am also blatantly tooting my own horn here] it's the blinging front page of the style section of the New York Times.

toot toot toot. And HELLO, Nicola Tesla as a style icon?! Totally awesome! [Christopher Nolan was all over that when he cast Bowie for that role in The Prestige...]

I might have even predicted [to which Roberto can attest] that steampunk is going to the next big thing - as in, just wait until you see it all over Urban Outfitters next year. Seriously! Who wants to find me a burnished brass iPhone? And with all practicality out the window, I love these watches...

Also, check out this sweet etsy shop of banging hip hop and r&b steampunk jewelry.

Yay Thursday hyperlink mania! Also, feel free to knock me down a few pegs the next time you see me by reminding me exactly how much time I spend [waste? fritter away when I could be doing real life and/or practical things?] on the internet to accomplish this sort of hypergloatery...

come on hide your lovers

2008-04-28T11:41:00.004-04:00

This weekend Liz hosted a citywide mix cd exchange, which actually ended up comprising mostly Harrisburg already-friends—but which I really think is the start of a beautiful thing. We each ended up with a lovingly crafted mix, and it was particularly cool because it eliminated the strange electromagnetic fields that tend to surround most mix cd creations [as in, a lot of times these creatures are designed to either impress or woo someone, and then when that doesn’t work out you get all this crazy emotional baggage attached to every song you used to just really like to sing in the shower.]

I decided to make a mix of cover songs that I really like, as well as some I’ve only recently discovered. Though it might say something about my lack of prowess when it comes to musical aestheticism, I am a huge sucker for a good cover. I’m the antithesis of any sort of musician [except for the drums on Rock Band, YEAH!], so I can’t determine if really liking cover songs means I don’t appreciate original art as much. Though now that I think of it, the fact that I like Rock Band might be an interesting correlating factor… ANYWAY, thanks to the Hype Machine, I have tons and tons of covers at my disposal at all times.

Here are some covers that I like that may someday turn into a themed mix cd. I call them, “Songs by Traditionally-Revered Artists that are the Only Songs by Said Artists that I Actually Like, as Performed By Artists I Like More”:

Iron and Wine - Wild Horses [Rolling Stones] courtesy of Captain Obvious

Radiohead – Sunday Bloody Sunday [U2] courtesy of Pretty Much Amazing!

Tegan and Sara – Dancing in the Dark [Bruce Springsteen] courtesy of WMFU's Beware of the Blog

If anyone can find a good one for Billy Joel, please let me know. Apparently all the musicians I like revile him as much as I do. :)

We only got four minutes [to make this tiny, tiny pie.]

2008-04-22T12:08:00.011-04:00

Something that people learn about me fairly quickly is that I love tiny adorable things. This has been used as an explanation for why I like babies--even though most people would not call me the "maternal type" and the idea of being responsible for one is terrifying.

I'm not sure how this all started [my family has always had a proclivity for tiny burrito-sized dogs?] but I can peg its manifestation to some point in college, when I got really into miniature horses and other tinier-than-expected species. [The world's greatest tinier-than-expected species being, in case you were wondering, THE DWARF MANATEE ahhhhh cuteness explosion.]

ANYWAY, knowing my weakness for all things small and snuffleable, Bekah got me a most excellent recipe book she had found with the impulse buys by the cash register at the craft store: Tiny Treats: Fun Foods to Make And Eat (an American Girls Library production) .

I do not think I have stopped cooing since. Don't even get me started on that tiny ice cream cone. [It's a Bugle with tiny melon-baller scoops of cream cheese! though I think ice cream would work just as well...] Tiny Treats is a book of recipes/instructions on how to concoct tiny [edible] replicas of real food items, like an ice cream cone made from a Bugle or a tiny watermelon made from red Jell-O and chocolate chips poured into a hollowed lime rind. [UGH it's so disgustingly cute you can't even imagine.]

One thing that makes this book particularly awesome is that a lot of the photos illustrate the scale of the tiny treats - all of which are completely precious - by showing them cupped in small hands, or pinched in little fists. Another thing that makes this book awesome is that its spiral bound and covered in plastic, to keep you from getting it covered in icing and jelly [a real problem in my culinary repetouire.] Here are some of my favorites:

Um, HELLO tiny pie! In case you cannot read it, it's the bottom of an ice cream cone filled with a miniscule amount of blueberry pie filling and topped with almond paste.
These bitty bunny slippers are two halves of a marshmallow, with sugar, coconut, and jimmie accents. Can you imagine using two fingers as tiny legs that would dance around in these slippers?

Hanging gardens of Babylon, it's DONUTS made from SINGLE CHEERIOS.

And for dessert, a chocolate cake make from a stack of Oreos. Genius. It's a birthday celebration for your Hummels... Which actually brings to mind the most immediate question and ultimate source of fascination with this book:

WHY? First of all, why did someone get paid to devise the instructions for a s'more made from a Golden Graham? And perhaps more importantly, why do I want to read about it more than I want to read a real book, or accomplish any actual task? An Oreo chocolate cake [or a fingernail-size French croissant, for that matter] is one of the most impractical things I can think of--but for some reason I can't STOP thinking about it. I feel a scientific theorem coming on. . . some sort of correlation between pointlessness and enchantment. . . maybe I'll call it the LOLcats Axiom?

Anyway, who wants to come to a tiny-food-only picnic?

Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya.

2008-04-15T10:28:00.006-04:00

Last week I watched Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure because my VHS copy, which had been wayward and astray for months, was discovered in the back of Betsy’s car.

I realized that I had forgotten the charm of a VHS taped off the television, with that nostalgic crackle and shake as the tape warms up, and the delightful surprise of well-meaning vintage commercials for Snuggle Fabric Softener.

I also realized that Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is quite possibly the best movie ever made – and here’s the root of the matter: I know I tend to let nostalgia cloud my generally-respectable cultural taste [Exhibit A: The Garbage Pail Kids Movie... oh MAN I just watched that video link... this movie is SO WEIRD!], BUT I feel like this time is different. Where the Garbage Pail Kids was a weak attempt to pander to the elusive 8-year-old baseball card-collecting demographic, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is comedic brilliance. It perfects the precarious balance between high and low comedy, with the ideal blend of wit, sarcasm, and silliness: a shining facet of 1980s cultural zeitgeist and in the Tim Burton canon.

What I want to know is, are these claims at all justified? Or, like a pair of plastic 3D glasses, is my lens of love for 80s whimsy distorting my perspective? I think what I need are some opinions from individuals who did NOT watch Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure as a child but have viewed it more recently—is it as funny and perfect? Or is it one of those "You had to be there" things, where "you had to be there" as a child who taped it off of HBO and watched it incessantly during early development, only to return 15 years later equipped with more knowledge and enhanced appreciation for Tim Burton and sweet cruiser bikes?

So what do you think? HiLARIOUS? [Please keep in mind that all arguments shall be framed in accordance with the High Fidelity Principle: "is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins; is it better to burn out or fade away?" As in, comments pertaining to the current state of Pee-Wee star Paul Reubens are not germane to discussions of the awesomeness of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, just as the current incarnation of Michael Jackson does nothing to diminish how kickass the Thriller album is.]

As though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air.

2008-04-07T16:18:00.007-04:00

I have been losing track of myself, organizationally. I returned last week from a lovely getaway to one of my favorite spots on the globe, which is this beach, in

Costa Rica

I’ve been lucky enough to travel here four times, and although the landscape changes and touristizes more and more all the time [and I fear will be indistinguishably Sandals Jamaica’d in the next five years], this place still feels isolated—and I’ve made it a tradition to spend at least one evening here alone, listening to music and slowly unwinding the tight frenetic spool of my near-constant anxious ruminations. As the sun drops and the tide rises, I really do feel like I’ve been holding my breath for months and it all whooshes out at once in a tremendous sigh of release that harmonizes with the last hurtlings of the surf.

At one point, the falling sun on the water reminded me of a passage from The Great Gatsby that I have always liked:

The quiet lights in the houses were burning out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

There may not be too much in common between starry-eyed illusions of social climbing and sunset personal reflections—but it’s more the image of a gleaming ladder, a secret portal to an unknown place, which only appears for a brief moment and only when you’re alone. The reflection of the dwindling sun looked like this ladder, or maybe some kind of yellow brick road—like a signal that God is listening. A green light at the end of the dock.

I came home feeling lighter, like I had shaken off some of the clutter, but I seem to have just plunged right back into it all. I’ve stopped using my day planner. I don’t wake up on time, and I come to work late and bedraggled. I feel like I never have enough hands or coordination to carry everything from my car to the house without dropping my keys. I’m afraid I won’t ever be motivated enough to sort every accumulated piece of mail, reply to each query or letter, or hunt down every corner’s dust bunny. I’m afraid I don’t know what it will take to get myself back on track. I’m afraid of a lot of things.

I’m afraid of my temper, especially while driving.
I’m afraid I’m not a good blogger [wordy, long-winded], and that I actually worry about blogging adequacy.
I’m afraid I won’t make it to Europe again.
I’m afraid I don’t “get” the ambient/discordant/minimalist/experimental trend of most new music I’m hearing.
I’m afraid I’ll move to a new place with the same old issues.
I’m afraid of getting married.
I’m afraid I’ll never get married.
I’m afraid my job may render me incapable of motivating myself and effectively managing my time ever again.
I’m afraid I’ll never be good with directions, maps, and navigation.
I’m afraid spring will never really come and it will be dreary cold forever.

I'm afraid I’ll never escape all the stupid things I worry about, so they’ll keep me from being something and doing something that I should be.

Incidentally, the name of the document file in which I compose blog entries is “yata”—an abbreviation for “Yawny at the Apocalypse,” which is a reference to something dreamy and lovely—but which never fails to remind me of this old gem instead.

I’m afraid having this song in my head for extended periods of time may do significant psychological harm.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

2008-03-21T14:20:00.014-04:00

In the past few days I have found myself fixating on patterns, unexpected repetitions, the nature of coincidence. I think I have always been drawn to connections and networks of meaning, unduly fascinated by strange and ironic concurrences between my life and art and the world and media. This is probably why a fair portion of my collegiate academic life was utterly consumed by Nabokov’s Pale Fire,* and why I am currently engrossed in the work of art historian Lawrence Weschler, whose mind works a lot like Nabokov as he illustrates and reflects upon the bizarre and uncanny un/sub/conscious[?] connections that course through history, art, science, and time in his book Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences. [based on the O’Connor story that – coincidentally? – I read last week…]

*Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found. [812-15]

Beware the Ides of March

Yesterday I stumbled upon a Weschler-like convergence [via a McSweeney’s contest for convergently-minded] that, in this reflective span of Holy Week, particularly caught my attention—though the particulars of the convergence are not as significant as the connection between convergences, Holy Week, forgiveness, prayer and uncertainty. Liz prepares a Holy Week sermon on forgiveness as I prepare for a night long prayer vigil in the Cathedral, and Bekah leads us in a Biblical reflection on forgiving and I recount the utter hurricane that was last week—and I realize suddenly that Holy Week was ushered in by the Ides of March.

Only days ago I was researching the Ides of March because Liz and Louie mentioned its arrival in passing, and I realized that I could not place the ominous “Beware the Ides of March”—the soothsayer’s words to Julius Caesar [in Shakespeare’s appropriation of Plutarch] forewarning the doom of March 15^th, the ides, or appearance of the full moon…. from then on to be a symbol of bloody betrayal.

I feel like as soon as I placed the Ides of March in my mental catalogue, its implications [though not so much bloody betrayal as utter chaos] wreaked havoc on me… kind of like watching the cursed movie in The Ring. The hours surrounding my Ides were some of the craziest I have experienced in months… probably since I untangled myself from Nabokov. Laptops and cameras and relationships crashed, my future went spinning up in a whirlwind, many of my best-laid plans seemed to go awry, and I felt torn up with anxiety about the decisions I was making and failing to make—I felt like so many of the lines in my own web of meaning were going slack.

I should have known it would happen this way: just when I felt at the end of my senses, that my mind would surely never be able to return to normal, focused functionings [I am well aware of my tendency to overreact about most things, and I am working on it], everything converged in an instant. What really happened was degrees of resolution, over a few days time – but it seeeeemed like in an instant every one of the frantic flares I had been pummeling into the air was suddenly answered! My parachute caught a favorable current and suddenly filled out with taut, reassuring solidarity.

But this ONLY happened when I felt like I physically could not think about things anymore—when I felt completely powerless, like I had done absolutely all I could to make things right and restoration was completely in God’s hands. Makes sense, right? I mean, of course, but why does it seem so impossible to stop worrying about things until I am at this point of exhaustion?

So the Ides skulked off, ushering a week of reflection in their wake. I have probably not spent as much of Holy Week contemplating the cross as I should be, but I have been thinking a lot about why things might converge—whether it is cosmic or just in my mind, though I don’t think that matters much. What matters is the realization that throughout my entire adult life it always takes CALAMITY for me to see that STILLNESS is NOT STAGNANCY. In the throes of the Ides I got a new tattoo—I’ve aimed to use these marks of permanency to log seasons of my life and the things I have been seeking and need to remember, and this one is the word “shantih” in my grandmother’s cursive. A Sanskrit word ending a Hindu Upanishad, shantih translates roughly into the call for tranquility, for “divine stillness.” T.S. Eliot ends The Waste Land with shantih, which he translates as “The Peace which passeth understanding”—debated as an un/sub/conscious allusion to [or infiltration of] Paul’s letter to the Philippians: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

For me this word creates a web of meaning coursing through my love of Eliot and literature, my fascination with convergences and allusory imprints, and my current quest for peace and stillness. Which is why I find it so interesting that I finally got this tattoo when I did. I am trying not to be such an anxious person, to [as much as I have qualms with the adage], “let go and let God.” But I have only been able to do so when things seem to be the antithesis of still… At least for now, this is how I am learning about peace that surpasses understanding. Peace that comes from awe at God’s stirring, and how He intends me to forgive circumstances and people in the face of uncertainty—trusting that stillness will be restored when my understanding and rationale has expired, and valuing that the seasons I tend to see as boring and stagnant as a time for rest and a time to pull tighter on the lines of others.

Might as well jump. Jump!

2008-03-17T10:14:00.015-04:00

Something you may not know is that the delivery of rock and/or roll requires a fine bit of athleticism. Not merely purveyors of the blistering hooks and power chords that have launched a thousand VH1 weekend marathons, true rock and roll stars are performers, acrobats, visual icons. These artistes must not only perfect the craft of hypnotizing gyrations and a commanding vainglorious strut, but also the delicacies of a well-timed high kick-straddle jump combo.

The supreme quintessence of which, of course, is Mr. David Lee Roth.

These days, you may think that such searing bravado is only reserved for the most obnoxious of reunion tour arena rock—but such is not the case. In fact, in recent months I have noticed a resurgence of the rock and roll jump in a most unlikely place: the indie rock band portrait. Are these artists paying unspoken homage to the influential leaps of Diamond Dave himself? Or, as Bloom suspected, can we really never escape the towering monolith of influence? Of course, the presentation of the contemporary rock and roll portrait jump is filtered through the blasé lens of the independent music image: as the rest of the outfit looks away, pondering something momentously inconsequential, one member leaps into the air, triumphantly shedding the fetters of hipster indifference in Rothian exuberance. Go ahead, jump.

Exhibit A: Illinois

Exhibit B: Lovedrug

Exhibit C: The 123 Go's

Exhibit D: mewithoutYou

heima means homeland

2008-03-07T12:06:00.004-05:00

mitt hjartað, slá
[my heart, beats]

Just for today, sigur rós is taking over the home page at YouTube—which means all the videos on the front page will be music videos, performances, AND the full version of the music documentary Heima. Heima shows the band in impromptu, unannounced performances in ghost towns, small town halls, mammoth concerts, and in the highland wilderness of Iceland—interspersed with beautiful stark footage of Icelandic environments. Interesting fact! I wondered who shot it, and upon googling learned it was Dean Deblois, whose singular previous directorial feat is Disney’s Lilo & Stitch. Hm.

Heima will probably be gone for free viewing before too long [I think it’s only available for one day] but it is precisely what I wanted to accompany my lackadaisical Cazh Fri cubiclings. Everything feels slightly more lovely. Granted, reduced on my desktop while I type a boring press release makes for a less than authentic xperience [I would love to absorb it in full in the near future?] but what I have learned thus far:

I want to go to Iceland.

I want to see sigur rós in concert.

I'll be the axe that clears the forest.

2008-03-04T15:46:00.007-05:00

I thought I’d think out loud about wha’s hoppenin’ on TV these days…

I. I am engrossed in Ninja Warrior AND Unbeatable Banzuke. And I have many thanks to Kate R. for the recommendzzhhsshs [a not-so-clever attempt to underscore the stupidity of pseudo-ironic LOLcats overuse. Which annoys me to NO end.] NW and UB are shows not unlike Most Extreme Elimination Challenge [MXC, colloquially] in format, [possibly in part explaining the fascination, as MXC was a huge element of most of my weekends in high school], which means that they are Japanese competition shows in which a bunch of contestants try to complete an obstacle course. In MXC the obstacles and pseudo-translation of commentators and contestants [and pretty much everything] are absolutely ridiculous, and the Americanization eventually made the show so vulgar as to be unwatchable. Ninja Warrior is awesomer for two reasons: they don’t make Orientalist racial and gender-offensive jokes, and the Ninja obstacle course is totally impossible and amazing! Think huge wall scalings, 2 inch ledge crosses, and three story rope climbs in 30 seconds. YouTube it, I’m serious. Unbeatable Banzuke is similar except the obstacle courses are designed for specialists in particular skills. Skills like pogo sticks, stilts, and hands walking. An added bonus of both shows is that the narration is epic and dramatically poetic: The competitor’s face is fraught with angst as he claws the Warped Wall like a wounded mother bear! See the rage in his pupils!

II. The Office is returning April 10. My Office quotes desk calendar makes me laugh every morning, but it can only fill the hole in my soul for so long.

III. New season of America’s Next Top Model. Tyra-tron Banks is still a subhuman cyborg.

IV. Arrested Development is my favorite new thing to watch. It’s one of those instances of eight billion people saying “Dude you NEED to watch this show, you will LOVE it,” and me finally getting around to watching it three years later, when everyone else has already seen every episode 3,000 times. Better late than never, right? I can understand why it was originally cancelled, though—the deadpan humor and bizarre interconnectivity is way ahead of its time, in prime time tv terms. Buster is currently my favorite.

In my attempt to find a fun video clip of Buster, I found the weirdest thing on the internet:

"Dogs at the Movies is an original series starring Beau and Lois, two English bulldogs with a love of DVDs and a desire to grace the World with their opinions. Each week our 2 canine critics provide their legions of fans with a unique and entertaining perspective about a newly released DVD. "

What the-?!?

V. I generally don’t find Saturday Night Live very impressive. Usually I feel like I’m painfully enduring a series of drawn-out awkwardly unfunny skits to get to a cool musical performance that gets cut short by credits [though I think the argument in this article has a lot going for it, too], and last week’s episode was really no exception—EXCEPT for Ellen Page’s monologue, which I think was spot-on. “What the blog are you blogging about, Sonic the Hedgeblog?” I think you should watch it. Here!

Next up? Maybe some Musings on Food that I Like... a.k.a. All I Want To Eat Ever is Shamrock Shakes.

24/7, 365, 366 in a leap year

2008-02-29T09:31:00.007-05:00

[i don't know why we here
since we gotta be here]

Two things:

1. Bikers say wrong night for a robbery.

2.

here's to leap year day and doing something crazy. four more years crazy.

(and we, we should have lost it)

2008-02-26T10:16:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine was recently talking about how whenever he reads Dave Eggers, he finds himself narrating his life in a wry, Eggersian interior voiceover. I knew what he was talking about immediately: I’ve experienced the same affliction myself AND I maintain that you can tell when just about anyone is reading Eggers because his/her writing will ooze with melodramatic self-awareness, sarcastic faux seriousness, and stream-of-consciousness lists. [This blog is an obvious example, pretty much all of the time, and there are no good excuses for my rip-offery other than that I try to at least counterbalance it with a rapid saturation of Chuck Klosterman überpop commentary. Can I help it that other, better, famouser writers HAPPEN to think exactly like I do about everything?]

I don’t think this inadvertent mimicry is a bad thing—when you read, you have to make your wheels turn to fit the book gears. So it makes sense that even when you stop reading, your processors will still be spinning like Dave Eggers, or Anne Lamott, or whoever. I think this is particularly true of young people [maybe? I haven’t really asked anyone who wouldn’t consider him/herself a “young person”… maybe it’s true of all people, or all writerly people…] and happens more often with contemporary, memoir-style writers—since they are mostly engaging the things we’re seeing day to day, it’s more natural to just plug in to their perspective.

But back to voiceover narration. While whoever I am reading usually functions as the artistic filter for my monologue, I don’t think any author really *triggered* this instinct in me. I’ve been narrating the details of my life in my head as they happen, allllll the time, for as long as I can remember. With soundtracks. Which is why I think this is more of a movie thing than a book thing. Even my dreams have soundtracks. Last night, for example, for some reason, my dream soundtrack was “We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)” [by Starship, formerly known as Jefferson Starship, formerly known as Jefferson Airplane. I feel like it’s a national rule that this chronology be cited any time anyone mentions a song by any incarnation of this band…]

I often wonder, but have asked only few, if this is something everyone does. Something makes me think it is not, that it is a pretty stinking sound indicator that I am as narcissistic as I sometimes suspect [as in, instead of fully engaging the life and the lives around me, I am starring in a movie of my own creation in my head at all times.] Also, I wonder why my narration is in third-person. E.g. “She wondered, as she picked her way through rivulets of ice on the cobbled sidewalk, how long it would really take to make it across the country on that train.” I think you probably get the drift and might not think this is anything worth pondering. Until you realize, you captivated reader you, that this means I have already thought about the typing of this thought process, earlier this morning, at least three times in my head. And that ultimately, what this means is, I have thought processes ABOUT my thought processes. I THINK about something, and then I REFRAME it in my head to the THIRD-PERSON and think about it AGAIN. This worries me, and is a pretty good indicator that I am going to go crazy sooner rather than later. So don’t be surprised when it happens.

Nevertheless, though, I’ve gotten used to my voiceover, and I think the game of choosing the right soundtrack for different obscure little moments is better then the game of worrying what other people think of me all the time. And some of my favorite moments have snuck up on me this way—I think if I wasn’t processing them through a narrator lens, I wouldn’t even notice them:

It was only a few minutes, but it made her wonder what she was so afraid of—why she more often feared solitude than sought it. Some of life’s snapshots that she remembered most often were from moments alone [the library in Oxford, the sunburned crust of beach], and this one had that same thick halcyon quality...

With every inch of skin encased in various degrees of plastic and nylon, she felt cocooned, impervious to the elements, viewing everything from a detached existence. If she yelled others ahead and behind would probably hear her, but for now everyone seemed content to retreat inside these individualized shells, enjoying the sense of shelter as they were propelled higher into the open air.

She is usually a miserable beast post-dawn and pre-coffee, but she likes the pair of owls that have recently taken residence in the tree outside the bathroom window. They hoooo softly and cold water swirls down the drain with toothpaste and she smiles.

She always missed things like meteor showers and satellites and was surprised that it was in the middle of a city that she discovered a perfect view. Craning back to take a photo of the oxblood disc, she thought it was so strange how our eyes have a greater magnification than our cameras. She was feverish so she didn’t mind the cold, but just gulped the hush and the light dust of snow and the soft glimmering reflections on the river.

Todd Howard is a Werewolf

2008-02-04T16:13:00.000-05:00

And now allow me to blow your mind with the latest in subconscious psychological theorems: The Bateman Hypothesis [also known as the Howard-Bluth Axiom]

Granted, the Bateman Hypothesis has had a rather tepid reception since I discovered it last week, but I have a feeling that the trusty blogosphere will give it the respect it deserves.

The Bateman Hypothesis, in simple terms, attempts to deduce the root of my attraction to actor Jason Bateman, recent player in indie darling Juno and star of the late sitcom-quod-cult-classic Arrested Development, among other projects.

I know I am quite late on the Arrested Development bandwagon, but I have good reason! Trust me, it’s not for lack of good intentions. A thousand people told me I just had to watch Arrested Development in college, that it was right up my alley, and I did not doubt them. I was just not at a point in my life in which I could effectively join a new storyline.

[See, our world is flooded with things, commodified and otherwise. A capitalist economy cannot help but trickle into a capitalist everything, after all, and what with our increasingly Wikipedia’d, aggregated, open source ecology, billions of more things are thrown into the mix every day. As a consumer and critic more than a creator, I’ve come to realize that there are only so many things that you can like. Seriously. There is just not enough time in a day, in a week, in a lifetime, to pursue and capture every single thing that you will enjoy consuming. Take Ryan Adams for example. I am fairly certain that I could really enjoy—and perhaps grow to love—Ryan Adams’ music. I know this because similarly-minded people already do. However, there is really just so much out there that I like and/or know I would like if I gave it the chance, and I don’t think I have the time or strength to start now on the Adams canon. Sometimes you just have to choose—or else you’ll never reeeeally appreciate anything, and your consumption will be characterized by surface relationships with the experiences that could change your life.]

ANYWAY, with the simultaneous introduction of DVR and a steady, homework-less 9 to 5, I have finally launched, heart soaring, into the deadpan hilarity of AD and its roguishly-yet-accessibly handsome leading man, Jason Bateman. And imagine my delight to discover Bateman and Michael Cera, another favorite Arrested Development player, in the über-hyped hipster-with-heart flick Juno.

Now, I can imagine how a general ambiance of roguish-yet-accessible handsomableness might lead to minor degrees of swoonage, and Bateman’s Juno characterization [featuring impressibe horror film savvy and guitar] might up the admiration ante. BUT—in true Freudian fashion—some inconsequential research led me to a shocking discovery: that the Bateman magnetism reaches much, much farther back, into the depths of my childhood.

Here goes.

I was familiar with the Bateman name before the days of Arrested Development, with a semi-certain inkling that he had been an 80’s sitcom star of sorts. Upon Googling his vitae, however, I stumbled upon the following image:

Jason Bateman’s star turn in 1987’s Teen Wolf Too, the less-than-inspired yet beloved follow-up to Michael J. Fox vehicle Teen Wolf. Bateman plays Todd Howard, cousin to Teen Wolf’s Scott Howard, who realizes upon receiving an unearned college basketball scholarship that he has cool acid wash jeans AND cool basketballer werewolf genes.

This film itself was not a particularly profound facet of my childhood. HOWEVER. It just so happens that this very poster adorned the walls of my childhood basement playroom for the greater extent of my childhood development. While a Teen Wolf Too poster may seem like a somewhat inexplicable centerpiece of nursery décor, for some reason we kept it up until it practically crumbled. I even remember purchasing it: it was among the $1 posters in a bin at Blockbuster, and, for some reason, it was the only one my five-year-old consciousness could identify.

Therefore, my attraction to Jason Bateman stems from associations of safety, comfort, and childhood simplicity generated by the watchful eye of the Teen Wolf Too poster that guarded the playroom of my youth. Without me knowing it, the Todd Howard palimpsest has colored my impression of Jason Bateman, and likewise the course of my early adult life. Do I really like anything? Or am I always guided by this desire to return to the uncomplicated and Barbie-laden days of my childhood?

Am I taking a mildly interesting coincidence far beyond its believable limitations? Probably. But at least it explains why I dig guys with basketball scholarships and acid wash jeans.

The 10 Commandments of Facebook

2008-01-24T12:06:00.000-05:00

[by an individual who may have transitioned from college to cubicle yet still can't shake her Facebookin' ways and knows you all do it, too]

Not ordained by Mark Zuckerberg, but by me: a moderately active Facebook user who remembers what it’s like not to have a News Feed OR taggable photos and who, thanks to a considerably uneventful post-collegiate “career path,” has regrettably permitted a drastic personal increase in social networking and/or profile stalking. I may not have brought you out of the land of slavery, but I sure know what I think is annoying.

I. Thou shalt not insert a ‘quoted’ nickname between one’s given and surnames, e.g. Debbie ‘Downer’ Palacky or Jon ‘Blazin’ Rodney. Nicknames are born, not made, son.

II. Thou shalt not post an entire photo album of pop art’sed and distorted photos of thyself and/or thy roommates. Your “idk, totally randomz!” album informs the world both that you are sometimes totally random late at night with your friends and that you have recently acquired a Macbook. Congratulations. [This may come as a surprise, but preset image filters are not interesting or impressive to anyone but you.]

III. Thou shalt have one, and only one, Wall. Be it a standard Wall, a “Super Wall,” or – heaven help us – a “FunWall,” you’ve made a commitment, and that commitment must be honored. Never again shall your “Friends” painstakingly recall a hiLARIOUS inside joke from last weekend only to be thwarted by the SEVEN decoy walls in the way of your actual means of communiqué.

IV. Thou shalt NEVER solicit others to join a pirate war, ninja fight, or any other flavor of the week suppressed minority group skirmish. “Donnie has invited YOU to join the Disenfranchised Librarian Fisticuffs.” Trust me, Donnie. However clever the combatants may be, your virtual battle will never be The One that convinces the rest of Facebook to surrender their carefully-maintained minimalist profiles.

V. Thou shalt not use Facebook as a vehicle to launch an amateur modeling career. Photographers can tell when you have manipulated saturation and contrast to a Technicolor degree, and real models don’t even DO that weird fishy pouty face.

VI. Thou shalt abide by the grammatical restrictions of “to be” verb use. You have been set free from the bonds of the “Patty is…” status, but with such great power cometh great responsibility. Take the extra nanosecond to delete the “is” [“Patty is LOVES PROJECT RUNWAY!!!”], or continue to challenge yourself to work within the guidelines of the irregular verb you have been given.

VII. Thou shalt accept the responsibility of photo album composition. YOU choose the best photo of you and your boyf in front of the Christmas tree from your new Nikon. “Oops! His head is blocking the angel!,” “Ew my face looks fat lol,” etc., are NOT adequate excuses for 17 renditions of the same pose, which was lame to begin with.

VIII. Thou shalt not yield to impulse and create a Group founded in a once-occurring inside joke. Continued references to said joke are sure to be fleeting, and the hilarity of the group’s mere existence will quickly lose its sparkle. [Then in six months you will have to deal with potentially awkward “Brett has left the Brett Bickerstaff Peed on My Potato Pancakes! group" news feed items.]

IX. Thou shalt not list Favorite Music in thy Personal Info unless thou actually hast favorite music. “Pretty much everything but rap and country” is not favorite music – it tells your audience that you have no taste.

X. Thou shalt abstain from gluttonous accrual of applications. Let us not forget Myspace, and why we left it. I am sure your newly single three-year college crush wouldn’t be interested in your backpacking trip to Tibet. No, no, he’ll be WAY more impressed by your talent for raising virtual pets and fending off rampant virtual zombies.

I can't swim so I dog paddle.

2008-01-18T09:46:00.000-05:00

"Musical canine freestyle" is something I have to research and write about for work today.

Some people are weird with their dogs.

My eyes can't look at you any other way.

2008-01-16T16:35:00.000-05:00

First things first. Do you even KNOW what’s in hollandaise sauce?

Breakfast happens to be my undisputed favorite meal of the day. It’s not that I like it because I make awesome breakfasts all the time [or ever], but that I would indubitably choose breakfast-y food over any alternately-categorized food in most circumstances—dependent, of course, on availability and practicality [as in, yes, I WILL choose an apple over an omelet for a day trip to Atlantic City].

And Eggs Benedict happens to be my favorite breakfast dish. A true United [Western] Nations of a plate, Eggs Benedict consists of two English muffin [England] halves topped each with Canadian bacon [Canada], a poached egg [everywhere?], and the aforementioned ever-illusive hollandaise sauce [Holland]—all arranged in a manner not unlike a pair of googly eyes.

Why, you might ask, given the sheer number of times I have consumed this dish, have I never pursued the ingredients before? Well, since it often is one of the pricier entrees at the local watering hole [what with all those worldly ingredients], I usually only eat it when dining with my family and the old man is paying. :) So it’s not something that really crosses my mind too often when I am in the throes of interweb research.

But today all of that changed.

Do you even KNOW what’s in hollandaise sauce? I will tell you. It’s egg yolks and butter. TONS of butter. And by TONS of butter I mean an entire STICK of butter for every egg yolk, which means probably around 3 or 4 sticks of butter in every serving. I don’t even know how these quantities are physically possible, as the science of emulsion eludes me, but there it is. The egg yolks are frothed, and then the melted butter and some other minor ingredients are whipped in. [I had spent YEARS casually assuming that such a bright yellow and mustardy flavor must be the result of some vinegar and mustard combo, but neither is present.] My horrifying realization of the day is that in my lifetime I have unknowingly eaten hundreds of sticks of butter. I’m thankful it’s not soylent green or anything, but still.

Why is this important? The fact of the matter is that hollandaise sauce is glorified mayonnaise. [And isn’t it just like America to trick us with the promise of something glamorous, and then shove mayonnaise in our gaping mouths…] It’s like finding out that Hunter S. Thompson never did drugs, or that your favorite obscure folk band actually wants to make it big with a ska album. The realization that something you hold dear is disingenuous, after all. And disingenuousness is my greatest disappointment.

Call me Ishmael

2008-01-15T10:34:00.000-05:00

a schlide-show for roberto

Your words are gelignite, or just another sentimental aside

2008-01-02T14:19:00.000-05:00

Top Things I Have Thought About in 2008, Thus Far

1. I just don’t “get” dubstep. It’s alleged-ly the next big thing. Burial, who appeared on approximately 89% of the vaingloriously blogged Best of 2007 lists I encountered, is credited with popularizing the genre, and while he/she has a cool musical anonymity thing happening, I have listened to some tracks and I don’t get the hype. Maybe my ear isn’t finely tuned enough to appreciate the “dark mood” and “sparse rhythms,” but, at least for now [I try to always be willing to be proven wrong], all it is to me is darkly and sparsely boring.

2. Is it possible to get Wii-Tennis Elbow? Apparently…

3. All songs about the New Year [and not feeling any different] are no better than “Butterfly Kisses.” Like the abhorrent daddy-daughter wedding dance classic, these songs were not written to express an artistic purpose but to cash in on consumer needs. In the case of “Butterfly Kisses,” it’s the need of people with terrible taste to have a specific song with which to perform a required wedding tradition in the most boring and disgusting way possible. In the case of New Year songs, it’s the need of people who store up sentimental significance in the celebration of New Year’s and need a way to express their feelings via AIM away messages and Facebook statuses. They pander to our temptation to be all wallowy and limply morose when we realize that our New Year’s celebration, once again, did not play out like the final sequence from When Harry Met Sally. Don’t believe me? From personal experience:

Azure Ray - “New Year”: On this day, we were born into the new year / And after the winter broke / We held hands and we ran / And we agreed that it had been a long one

Death Cab for Cutie - “The New Year”: So this is the new year / And I don't feel any different

Thursday - “Jet Black New Year”: Like calendars dying / at New Year's Eve parties / As we kiss hard on the lips / and swear this year / will be better than the last

Cursive – “Break in the New Year”: We sweetened for a kiss / The kiss of a new year to come / But those days are gone / We never got resolution - it never comes

4. Resolutions? Read more. Sleep more. Eat more vegetables. TRAVEL. Be more thankful.

And that's still a long way from the place where we are.

2007-12-27T15:18:00.000-05:00

Because there are very few persons in this office, at least on this floor, today, and I have very little motivation to accomplish much more than excessive daydreaming, a list[!!] of places and things I have always wanted to experience:

La Bohème at the Met
A fantasy culled from repeat indulgences of Moonstruck, one of my favorite films. Granted, I wouldn’t have a young rebellious Nic Cage at which to gaze during poignant moments, but I think the dramatic and dream-eyed effect would still be there.

Cirque du Soleil in London
I don’t really care which performance it is, or where it is, really [although London would be a first choice, I suppose], but for some reason whenever Cirque marathons run on Bravo I just can’t tear myself away. Also I am intrigued by circuses in general, and Cirque du Soleil replaces a some of the PT Barnum exploitation factor with more glitter and spinning.

Swimming with manatees in Florida
A lifelong dream come true. Apparently at this Crystal River you can snorkel with manatees, perhaps even smooshing a smooshy nose or two.

Harlem Globetrotters at Stabler
This, I imagine, would be exclusively enthralling and delightful. My mom sends me the ticket information any time the old ‘trotters roll into town, but I’ve never managed to make it to a “game.” This one would be perfect, as it is on Valentine’s Day [wink wink, potential suitors!] and in a nice hometown venue that happens to be the site of my first concert [Green Day, 1995]. Did you know the Globetrotters were established in 1926?

Riverdance in Jersey
There was a fairly well-circulated infomercial for Riverdance a few years back that sparked my interest in this phenomenon. They also tour in Europe, but there’s something about sensationalized Irish step-dancing that would make me feel foolish if I flew all the way across the Atlantic to see it in its “natural habitat.” Something makes me think the ladies of Newark, NJ would enjoy it with just as much—if not more—fervor.

The World’s Smallest Horse in St. Louis, Missouri
Thumbelina, the World’s Smallest Horse, is my favorite animal for a lot of reasons: first, she is the world’s smallest horse. And secondly, she tours the country for charity. One such tour stop HAPPENED to be in Harrisburg, PA at the Harrisburg Mall, where I HAPPEN to be residing – but in a twist of fate that rivals any Magi’s gift, I HAPPENED to be inextricably out of town that very day. Therefore I would like to see Thumbelina at her home, Goose Creek Farms in St. Louis, because there she would be more happy and likely to befriend me than at some mall spectacle.

Jellyfish Lake in Palau
I saw a special on this lake a long time ago and have wanted to go ever since. According to PBS, “Millions of years ago, jellyfish were trapped in this lake after a submerged reef rose from the sea, creating a landlocked saltwater lake.” The trapped jellyfish adapted by learning to eat algae, and subsequently they lost most of their stinging ability—which means people can swim with them without the lasting impression of murderous stinging pain.

Here's hoping your Christmas break or whathaveyou is more thrilling than mine!

p.s. I was recently introduced to the Hype Machine, which is pretty rad, and I got this new widget that shows some of the music I have been enjoying. Technology.

drop it like it's hot

2007-12-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

One of the most fascinating things about Central Pennsylvania, I have learned, is its proclivity for dropping things to ring in the New Year. Before moving here, I was naturally familiar with the tried-and-true Times Square Swarovski crystal orb of glory.

[Sidenote: Times Square for New Years = everybody peeing on themselves. Think about it. A million people crammed into a tiny space for twelve hours – it’s not like you’d leave to go find a bathroom… you’d never find your friends again! And that potent combination of brisk cold and liquor flowing like wine… everybody’s GOTTA pee, you just know it. So where do you go? That’s right, right where you are. And THAT’s why you will never see me at Times Square for New Years.]

ANYWAY, I assumed that the great ball drop/pee on yourself was the thing you did if you wanted to see something fall down a pole for New Years. That, or go to a strip club. But in Central PA, for some reason, people LOVE to drop random crap from poles. With fireworks. This has always puzzled me because its not like Quakertown ever felt the need to hoist and drop a Quaker, or Doylestown Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…

Here is a list[!!], courtesy of a local newspaper [which I am sure publishes this sort of thing every year, but I am new, so I get to reflect on it with newness], of things that are dropped in towns in Central PA, with my interpretation of why they are dropped.

Harrisburg: Strawberry [because of Strawberry Square?]

Lebanon: Bologna [because of the PA Dutch delicacy Lebanon bologna, a key ingredient in those delightful Lebanon bologna-cream cheese roll up things]

York: White Rose

Lancaster: Red Rose [my favorite New Years droppin’ combo – because of the War of the Roses, and the houses of York and Lancaster]

Elizabethtown: M&M [because they want to compete with—

Hershey: Chocolate Kiss [because of Hershey]

Falmouth: Goat [I have no idea. I don’t know where or what Falmouth is, but I think this is the weirdest. I heard once, though, that it is a stuffed goat, not a live goat. But stuffed in the taxidermy sense, which is hellsa creepy]

Lititz: Pretzel [like every Susquehanney town, they probably make pretzels in Lititz]

Frogtown: Frog [duh]

Gratz: Wildcat [again, I don’t know where this is or anything about this. But I imagine that Gratz was just like, “What’s the raddest thing we could do to compete with Hershey? Wildcats. Wildcats are rad.”]

Hummelstown: Lollipop [lame, because they should obvi be dropping a Hummel]

Dillsburg: Pickle [because of Dills. I have seen this one, actually, and it was glorious. The pickle seems to be a life-sized Mr. Peanut that was spray painted glittery green.]

Red Lion: Cigar [Red Lion is a class act.]

Shippensburg: Anchor [because of Ships]

Newville: Spring [like, the season? Or a trickling brook? Or a Slinky? Either way it is probably always something totally fresh and like, new]

Duncannon: Sled [because Duncannon seems like an old-timey name, and old timers like sleds]

New Bloomfield: Huckleberry [because it’s the birthplace of Huckleberry Hound. I made that up.]

Liverpool: Canal Boat [because Liverpool the First, in England, has a canal]

Seven Valleys: Chicken [because in Seven Valleys there are Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Seven Mules for Sister Sara, and not ONE of them is allergic to chicken]

I would like to make it a personal goal to see ALL of these things this year, which will of course require a flying time traveling DeLorean. Which happens to be the number one present on my Christmas list. In fact, I would go as far as to say that when I eventually found a cute small town, I will certainly decree that we will drop a flying time traveling DeLorean. Because c'mon, that would rule.

And the yards around your feet fall away while you're asleep

2007-12-12T16:42:00.000-05:00

I love lists. Making lists, checking things off of lists, and, especially in this season, collecting and reading end-of-the-year “of 2007” lists. Here is a list[!] of some good ones I have seen:

Pitchfork’s Top 50 Music Videos of 2007
Not as good as their all time 100 Awesome Music Videos, and not as significant to pretentious music literati as their forthcoming top albums of the year list, but still nice because it's fun to watch clever videos and these are selections most people probably don’t see. The Arcade Fire “My Body is a Cage” fan video [edited montage from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West] is a favorite.

The Oxford University Press’ Word[s] of the Year: 2007
The word of the year is LOVACORE [someone who eats locally grown food], which is MUCH BETTER than Webster’s choice, which is very “hello, 2002!” OUP also considered word/phrases such as “colony collapse disorder” (a still-unexplained phenomenon resulting in the widespread disappearance of honeybees from beehives, first observed in late 2006), and “mumblecore,” which has very recently become one of my new favorite words.

Kurt Loder’s Best Movies of 2007
[this link shows up hella messy on my computer, so apologies if that is also the case for you.] Call me crazy, but there is still something I like about MTV – Kurt Loder’s film reviews. What I appreciate about this list is that it has nothing to do with MTV or anything MTV cares about these days, and it contains a solid collection of films that are relatively accessible to the common man [read: movies that may not be playing at the local cineplex but that do not require plane tickets to New York or Paris or Robert Redford.] All of Loder’s Bests are either some of my favorites [No Country, Zodiac, Gone Baby Gone] or films I know I will like when I see them [Sweeney Todd and Jesse James..]. P

Kurt Loder’s Worst Movies of 2007
I don’t necessarily agree with all of his selections [I really liked “Death Proof”], but the descriptions are fab. For Hannibal Rising: “Staunchly faithful to the book, which was also terrible.” And for The Hitcher, possibly the worst remake decision ever [because who can step to Rutger Hauer?]: “Yet another entry on God's long list of questions for producer Michael Bay.”

Aquarium Drunkard’s Year in Review – Top Six Albums of 2007 [plus 12 extra]
Music bloggers love lists almost as much as I do, and after careful and/or flippant consideration, this is my favorite of the lot. Sometimes I listen to channel 26 on Sirius, and sometimes the voice behind Aquarium Drunkard is the lunchtime guest DJ, and most of the time it’s a consistently rocking lunch. Not surprisingly then, out of the many prominent music bloggers revealing their carefully crafted best of lists, AD put together the list that most corresponds to my own amorphous and un-composed favorite albums selections. A primary factor is that he didn’t put Panda Bear at No.1, unlike most such lists. I like Panda Bear fine, but to be honest Person Pitch is just a little too distractingly discordant for me. Also, a good amount of my other total faves also made the top 18 [Besnard Lakes, Iron and Wine, Radiohead, the National, Andrew Bird, Band of Horses], AND we have the same favorite National album.

iTunes Most-Downloaded Songs and Albums of 2007
What the beans, America. Maroon 5… really? I can only hope that the artists with actual integrity are being adequately supported [illegally and non-monetarily] in other ways, or else the Planet is certainly in Peril.

Chin up, cheer up. My love's another kind.

2007-11-29T15:22:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking for awhile about devoting some reflection and research to some of the finer [or weirder] facets of my hometown. Most people have a stock of collective hometown lore and legendry, shared stories and claims to fame, which is an interesting sort of preservation of folklore, maybe. Also, I truly believe that there is something that sets my hometown, Quakertown, apart. I’ve found that most people regard their native soil with affectionate distaste. This is probably the best way I could describe how I feel about Quakertown, but I also think that people from Quakertown affectionately hate Quakertown with a profound passion that surpasses other individuals’ more casual irreverence.

An illustration: practically all of my friends and acquaintances know that I am from Quakertown, while I probably know the specific birthplaces of only a few. This is probably because Quakertown has a pretty memorable name and because I talk about it fairly often—but if you asked me point blank, I wouldn’t say that I like it as much as it’s a preposterous quagmire of suburban hooligans, petty crime, loud imported automobiles, and entirely too many dining establishments. Which is again probably true of a lot of suburban pockets of the Commonwealth. Thus, the question at issue: WHY do people preserve a fascination with Quakertown? Why does the Q-Mart continue to linger in my conversational repertoire? How comes, in an era of increasingly ubiquitous digital connectivity, no one has yet reflected blogally on this interesting phenomenon? [note: Quakertown IS an Urban Dictionary entry… albeit not a very witty one…] Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that along with the aforementioned stock hooligans, diners, stupid cars, etc., Quakertown is also chock full of a TON of weird crap. And, for some reason, it’s not very well publicized outside of spoken lore. To set my mind at ease [or maybe construct a basic proposal for some sort of future PAID writing project…] I hope to explore some of bizarre and/or interesting things about my hometown. I have a few ideas at the moment, and hopefully some other people will provide some more topics of interest along the way. I’ll start with

The Weber

I think the Weber was invented in Quakertown. My only evidence for this assertion is that I remember reading this fact once on a paper placemat at a now-forgotten restaurant—and I can’t find anything on Google to refute the claim.

The Weber is a cheesesteak sandwich with hoagie [NOT sub] fixins like lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayonnaise. On the “cheesesteak” Wikipedia entry, this creation is listed as a “cheesesteak hoagie.” Either way, it’s delicious, and for most of my life I assumed without much forethought that the Weber was, at the very least, an accepted menu reference across the Eastern Seaboard. When I went to college, however, I realized that absolutely no one I met had ever heard the term before. It was one of those Matrix-ian philosophical moments, when you realize that reality as you know it is actually a mere cerebral projection… a bit of an exaggeration, but still—it prompted me to investigate further. “Investigate further” basically meant that I forgot about it for awhile until I discovered a Quakertown restaurant taking credit for the invention on a placemat.

I’m pretty good at looking stuff up on the internet, so I thought I’d give the Weber a try—and my results, I think, only solidify my case for the Weber’s Quakertown heritage. My first result was this Wikitravel guide to Pennsylvania. The Weber appears as a bullet item under “Eat.” According to the page credits, this particular wiki was compiled from work by a slew of contributors, including “beeracuda@yahoo.com” and “Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel.” Beeracuda is a pretty awesome email address. Unfortunately, these profiles do not list regions, so I can’t be sure if the Weber wikier is from Quakertown.

The next results are menus from the West Point Deli, conveniently located in Lansdale, PA – a mere hop-skip from Q-town, and then from the North Penn Gun Club in Trumbauersville, a Quakertown borough. In my crowning achievement, I found another local restaurant menu that included the Weber: the Franconia Heritage. The Franconia Heritage [“the Heritage,” familiarly] is a restaurant almost entirely populated by my grandmother and her friends. I think this is significant because it illustrates how the Weber may be a gem of knowledge only known to people who frequent septuagenarian diners, thus explaining its dire lack of web presence.

In conclusion, I put forth that the Weber must have been invented in Quakertown [okay, or in the surrounding county] because that is the only place, it seems, where you can find one. At any rate, I think the Weber is pretty important because 1. it’s tasty, 2. it’s a logical progression from the cheesesteak, and 3. it's one of relatively few non-incriminating claims to fame for our little not-very-Quaker village, so someone might as well start claiming the fame. If I was feeling a little more Nancy Drew, I would send this meandering correspondence to a local news outlet to see what could be uncovered. If I was feeling a little less Nancy Drew and a little more wired, I would probably start a Wikipedia entry for it. Now if I could just find that placemat…

The best of the vanished marvels have gathered inside your door.

2007-11-16T09:58:00.000-05:00

11/13/07

November is happening. Apparently, autumn occurred in a span of about eight-or-so hours, approximately two weeks ago. In that duration all leaves technicolored, their stems were seized with a brittle porosis, and they began to blanket the parks and yards where Scottie dogs now wear sweaters. Unfortunately, I was not awake for most this marvelous time-elapse, for it was still dwindling summer about two weeks ago, and it is now autumn in its terminal stages. I wish I could have had a little more time to prepare because this sort of landscape makes me disgustingly whimsical and extra-enchanted by things like Scottie dogs in sweaters—and it only widens the crevasse between autumn wonder and other, less golden seasonal affectivities.

November 29, 1960. Nice, France. And I, Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

November has been shaped to a surprising degree by animals. Along with the continually joyous and occasionally aggravating Dane the Sheltie, we have recently acquired a cat named [delightfully] Bratwurst. Bratwurst was generously donated by future-housemate Steve, in efforts to address less-welcome animals: the robo-mice that have managed to conquer every high-or-low inch of our kitchen and whoknowswhereelse. Unbeknownst to me in the original cat acquisition, however, was the added critical issue of squirrel. In the house. The squirrel in my bedroom fiasco was covered with adequate depth in the house blog, but suffice it to say that I never until now realized that I could be so completely irrationally terrified. I was TERRIFIED of the squirrel when I came upon it in the first floor sink, I was TERRIFIED when it was re-discovered in my bedroom, and I continue to be PARALYZED any time I think I hear squirrely scratchings in the walls or closets. I hope Bratwurst [who has recently, unofficially, been re-christened “Princess Bratwurst Leia Cleopatra,” to help us remember that she is a girl] is ready to eff some squirrel up. [Another thing pertaining to animals is the fairly recent decision to describe any pluralization of animals in the singular. As in, “I hope there are no more squirrel in our crawlspace” or “There sure are a lot of dog in this neighborhood.” I just think it lends a nice tone of authority.] We also have a weird selection of fish, in which I am probably the only to have even a mild interest. Dane is still my favorite house animal because the fish are largely boring, I hate all uninvited rodents, and I am allergic to Bratwurst.

“November Rain” never ceases to invoke some of my most impassioned car singing. I don’t care what anyone says; it is a triumph. I cannot foresee a time in my life when the melodramatic lyrics and indulgent guitar solos WON’T make me feel at least 15% better about everything.

November has seen a lot of soup consumption. I decided a few weeks ago that I really like soup, and there’s no reason why, really, I shouldn’t just eat it as much as I want. It’s fiscally responsible, relatively healthy, and it makes me happier than anything else I could assemble or purchase, given my mealtime time and location constraints. So I have been eating soup for as many meals as I can, for as many days in a row as possible, for about 23 straight days. Clearly it started with the Phở obsession, but I started to realize that even the Campbell’s Condensed was just so awesome. My primary soups of choice are Campbell’s Condensed Healthy Choice Tomato, Chicken Noodle, and [occasionally] Cream of Chicken, which I keep stocked for almost every lunch and dinner during the week. It is indeed a very limited selection, but I have yet to tire of it—especially since everything [everything!] tastes at least 80% better once I employ my standard doctoring technique, which always involves red pepper flakes, ground pepper, garlic powder, and some Frank’s Red Hot. Seriously. Some condensed tomato with Red Hot and a dash of the other accoutrements, a layer of melty mozzarella on top—it is a perfect delight. My only worry is that my digestive system has adapted to a soup-and-cereal-centric diet and will soon not to be able to process solid foods. But that can’t really happen, right?

November will conclude with what I choosing to call my personal manifest destiny, as in “Westward the course of empire takes its way,” or, “I am going to Oregon for Thanksgiving.” I’ve felt the invisible threads of wanderlust tightening around my heart for awhile now, and I am really excited to 1. see the Pacific Northwest, 2. see Amber and Dan and Car, and 3. hopefully raze some buffalo along the way [which is strictly a manifest destiny allusion. I don’t want to raze any buffalo, although I will be pissed if any of my oxen die when I’m fording the river.]

Try taking a journey by covered wagon across 2000 miles of plains, rivers, and mountains. Try! On the plains, will you slosh your oxen through mud and water-filled ruts or will you plod through dust six inches deep?

If for some reason you don't survive -- your wagon burns, or thieves steal your oxen, or you run out of provisions, or you die of cholera -- don't give up! Try again... and again... until your name is up with the others on The Oregon Trail Top Ten.

Halloween XIV: These Happy Golden Years

2007-10-31T09:33:00.000-04:00

Derek and Jamie hosted their annual Halloween gala last weekend, and it was extravagantly terrifying. I have a special place in my heart for proper execution of Halloween-related horror and revelry.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays because I really dig candy, horror movies, costumes, ghost stories, and creeeeeepy music. Earlier this week I went to the gym, and since it was pretty late all of the cardio machines with tv screens were open, so I got to use the elliptical AND watch Friday the 13^th Pt. III - the one that hit theaters during the big 3-D phase (a 'la Jaws 3, Amityville 3-D, and Plan 3-D from Outer Space) and therefore is chock-full of outrageously ridiculous 3-D shots of exploding eyeballs and bloody machetes. I can’t imagine what the old men on the treadmills behind me must have been thinking, but it was one of those moments where I really see the benefits of increasingly ubiquitous technology in everyday life. There I was, exercising in a controlled temperature environment on a finely tuned machine that kinesthetically calculated my body’s performance and reactions AND played the Friday the 13^th marathon for my viewing enjoyment.

Another among the films screened in the spirit of Halloween fright this year was Phantasm. I always maintained that Phantasm was one of the scariest movies in my repertoire, although I hadn’t seen it in full for approximately fifteen years. I was happy to discover upon re-viewing that I STILL think it is way scary, even when viewed through a more mature, more “cultured” lens. It is definitely ridiculous and inexplicably weird, so maybe “way scary” is too strong—but I can definitely still see why I was terrified of it when I was younger. I’ll take weird lighting and abruptly bizarre low budget sequences over the contemporary trend of elaborately disgusting shock-value gore any day.

Still on the platter for the close of this witching season is costume party bowling [complete with a spooky buffet] at our place of bowling. I originally read an ad about the event in a newspaper, but today, strangely, I can’t find any information about it. Do you think it was an event planned by a ghost? And if we go we’ll get trapped in a portal to another ghostly dimension? I hope so. Another event is Creepstravaganza Pt. II: the Ghoul-est party of the season, which is a scary costume soiree I co-host. One thing I’ve learned about Halloween parties by planning a Halloween party is: there is only one essential décor item, and it is fake cobwebs. You wouldn’t believe how far one bag of cobwebs will get you. Seriously, don’t be tricked by all that fancy light up interactive junk they’ve got out now. Fake cobwebs and a blacklight. And maybe some of those slice-and-bakes with bats on them. Now that’s a party.

and when you write a poem

2007-10-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

I know the words
I know the sounds
before you write it down

Peace is a fascinating location. As in, “I am at peace.” I am not there, but I think I’m at least negotiating a precarious balance between patience and intolerance, peace and frustration. I am trying to figure out how people end up at peace [is it a journey?], and I cannot help but suspect that there is a possibility I will never be there. This is mostly fine. A lot of my faith is structured around being okay with doubt and honest about frustration. At the same time, though, I marvel at the people around me who just seem soooo much more okay with things that are terrible. Or even just things that are annoying.

In a safe estimate, I would say that I complain a lot. A lot to other people, and even more to myself and to God. One thing I wonder is, are some people just more inclined to worry about things, and then complain about them? I think it is definitely the case that some people worry more than others, but I am not sure yet if ruminating is necessarily inherent. In other words, is personal disquiet something I can overcome?

I used to worry all the time, but I slowed down to live my life...

This song concludes the Denison Witmer album that accompanied me through a particularly worrisome period, and while it has provided me comfort [and a selection of embarrassingly awestruck encounters with Denison Witmer, in the drooly-creepy “it feels like you wrote this song especially for me” fashion], I cannot seem to figure out exactly how slowing down to live my life is accomplished. Prayer? I pray a lot to arrive at peace. But I worry [surprise] that to stop my brain from roving over every thousandth minute anxiety may require a brain transplant. How much of at peace is spiritual, and how much is physical, or chemical?

It is probably the wrong route to project that peace will come with personal objectives. That’s how I usually end up thinking about it, though. “Once I have a job I like…” “When I feel better about my body…” “When I finally find someone…” I’ll be at peace. Will I? I am incredibly blessed and generally happy right now, but before I fall asleep I am worried. And when I am alone I am anxious.

I can’t decide if at peace is a puzzle to be solved, a journey to be embarked upon, a goal to be relinquished, or something I’m not seeing.

I just came here to bounce.

2007-10-23T16:45:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite shows—and, probably, life experiences—ever.

There are rare moments when it feels like everyone in my particular pocket of existence starts to breathe collectively. However fleeting and relatively insignificant the instance may be, these moments are fantastically thrilling and simultaneously peaceful. This is how I felt in the crowd at the Justice concert on Sunday. Maybe because I haven’t done the whole crushed in a crowd thing in a lonnnggg time, and probably because I got lucky in the niche I happened to be smashed into, the entire experience was just exhilarated and perfect. Despite being drenched in glowstick goo and sweat both mine and not mine, and losing a [negligible] part of my shoe and being occasionally stepped on, I felt like me and the crowd and the DJs were all breathing and moving in harmony. Cheesy? Yes. But aren’t these moments infrequent enough as it is? And isn’t there ALWAYS a too-tall too-smelly jerk who keeps elbowing you in the ear, especially at the sold-out show of the band you’ve been most looking forward to seeing, if you’re lucky enough to actually SEE the band? [This might be a concern fully understood only by those of limited stature, for whom live music experiences are often a two-hour parade of oaffish shoulder blades and necks, punctuated by happenstance glimpses of a musician from behind an ogre’s earlobe. But I’m not bitter…] Anyhow, the clouds parted over the Trocadero and I somehow ended up in the front of the crowd, with a perfect view of the band, with anti-obnoxious people who were as thrilled as I was, AND with ample dancing room. A ten. And tens are worth celebrating.

[This is not my video footage, so many thanks to the people who put their videos on youtube for me to relive and relive.]

and I could not stay for I believed them

2007-10-18T16:26:00.000-04:00

this.

They don't make coats for this kind of cold, doll.

2007-10-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

Some people might say I have an addictive personality, and these people would not so much mean that my personality is addictive to others but that mine is the sort of disposition to get addicted to things easily. I personally prefer the looser term “fixative” – meaning that I am prone to fixate on something for a certain amount of time but have little trouble giving it up when I’m through. For intermittent amounts of time, in other words, I will discover one thing that I would like to be doing/reading/watching/consuming – at all times. I latch.

A random sampling of things I have latched on to in my lifetime: Echo the Dolphin for Sega Genesis, fat-free-chocolate Snack Pack pudding packs, the beanbag toss, thrift store scouring, gummy cola bottles, the crunchwrap supreme, Snood, and, regrettably, platform sneakers. Currently my fixativity has manifested itself thusly: Vietnamese noodle soup and the card game Pit.

I also happen to live with a gaggle of similarly-fixative personalities, which means that we latch on to things [mostly games] with great frequency. At least it’s not drugs, right? We are at the moment fairly entrenched in Pit. Vietnamese soup is more of a personal fixation, in that I imagine I could happily consume the soup at Vietnamese Garden on Riley St. at least once every day, indefinitely.

A sidenote on “gaggle”: I have a sort of soap box about collective animal nouns [Animal Collective?!] that I suspect was initially sparked by an article I once read in Highlights magazine. Collective nouns for animals, or terms of venery, as they are fancily known, have been developed in a considerably arbitrary manner. I seem to remember that many of them [murder of crows, charm of goldfinches, etc.] were decided upon by gatherings of the bored and rich in rainy-day drawing rooms during that whole imperialist fascination with natural history period—which also may not be the case; I am not convinced that I haven’t mashed up this understanding from a lot of different and unrelated history lessons. Regardless of any confirmed accuracy, however, I do know that these terms have been made up by random huntsmen and stuff, and I think that says something historically about the power of people who have a lot of time on their hands.

Anyway. Pit. For such an uncomplicatedly-structured game, Pit has a remarkable Jekyll & Hyde effect, by which I mean it turns me [and most participants at my house] into a ferocious beast. It’s a stock market game, for the love of Pete, but I am sure I have never sworn so much and so loudly as I have while playing Pit. I also am sure I have never gotten so physically exhausted during a card game. You should probably not let this scare you, as I do tend to be somewhat excitable anyhow, with a tendency to get inordinately mad at a lot of minor things [the pumpkin patch isn’t OPEN on WEEKDAYS?! What is WRONG with this country…]. What I’m saying is, Pit is probably the most surprisingly and immediately ice-breaking game I know of for group social situations. Pit should probably give me a free set of cards for this endorsement. For most of my day, almost every day, I wish I was playing Pit instead of doing what I am doing. Ultimately, you should probably come over and play Pit with us someday soon, before the fixation moves on to Hungry Hungry Hippos or something. Oh I really really wish our next fixation would be Hungry Hungry Hippos.

you are a poem, little pieces of my senses broken up to form an image

2007-10-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

Narcissus and Echo
Fred Chappell

Shall the water not remember Ember
my hand's slow gesture, tracing above of
its mirror my half-imaginary airy
portrait? My only belonging longing;
is my beauty, which I take ache
away and then return, as love of
teasing playfully the one being unbeing.
whose gratitude I treasure Is your
moves me. I live apart heart
from myself, yet cannot not
live apart. In the water's tone, stone?
that brilliant silence, a flower Hour,
whispers my name with such slight light:
moment, it seems filament of air, fare
the world becomes cloudswell. well.

We pause from spinning our hips, the old soft shoe.

2007-10-07T17:11:00.000-04:00

10/5/07

Courtesy of Facebook News Feed:

Be heard.

[Sponsored]

We want to know you’re opinions! Take the Skittles® Poll or chime in on the Skittles® Discussion Board today!

Facebook News Feed apparently has a window into my soul. Because if there’s one thing I [and the rest of Generation Now] like, it’s to be heard. Am I right? And if there’s one thing I personally would like to be heard about, it certainly is Skittles. I am so glad social networking platforms are being utilized to their utmost potential, and that big business wants to know that “I am opinions.” Sure got me pegged.

So Skittles. I am not about to let this valuable opportunity slip through the cracks. My least favorite flavor-and-color is grape-and-purple. I find that too many Skittles make my teeth ache. Is that more because they are sweet or because they are chewy? Fruit Smoothie Skittles were a success, as were Tropical. Ice Cream flavors, not so much. I like Skittles but I would never CHOOSE them given a moderate-to-ample fruit candy selection. DOTS would come first in cinema situations, and gummy cola bottles, the most superior of all non-chocolate confectionary options, always are first dibs if available. I don’t think "Carnival Fun Bubble Gum" is the right direction to take in today’s cutthroat market. Carnies are not palatable, and all carnival fun bubble gum makes me think of is engine-grease’d popcorn butter’d carnie hands palming a handful of slightly warmed and tacky Skittles. Mostly in creepity grape-purple.

a map is more unreal than where you’ve been or how you feel

2007-09-25T23:41:00.000-04:00

9/24/07

While doing some research on social networking today, I stumbled upon [quite fortuitously, for my deriving-some-entertainment-out-of-work purposes] the following legitimate university-endorsed study: “What is popular on Wikipedia and Why?”

Something you need to know:

The ten most visited Wikipedia pages in the entire five month study were:

1) “Main page”

2) “Wikipedia”

3) “Wiki”

4) “United States”

5) “WII”

6) “World War II”

7) “Sex”

8) “Naruto”

9) “List of sex positions”

10) “PlayStation 3”

Now, I like Wikipedia and am a considerably firm advocate for the web community as factual gatekeepers [i.e. people who are personally invested in a particular topic will never stand for it to be incorrect on Wikipedia, and the constant collaboration more often than not yields an excellent bibliography]. HOWEVER. Excluding the top three, this list is somewhat disconcerting [yet also not surprising...?] for a variety of reasons…

[you’d think after twenty two years I’d be used to the spin]

2007-09-20T13:23:00.001-04:00

9/20/07

Reflections on America’s Next Top Model

I used to really like this show, primarily in the bonding-through-squealing sense that is mandatory to survival in all-female dorms. Regardless, I like fashion magazines and photography and social commentary, so ANTM was a good fit. What’s more, I thought Tyra Banks was a pretty good host, as reality competition hosts go [when she laid the proverbial smackdown on Tiffany in season two, she had me shaking in my stilettos.]

I kind of found better things to do with my time for a few seasons, but last night was craft night at the house so we thought, hey! let’s see how Tyra and co. are faring with the latest crop of gangly raw talent. I wasn’t paying full attention because I was trying to make jewelry out of seashells that wasn’t heinously kitschy [impossible?], but I saw enough to learn that at some point in the past year, Tyra Banks became a robot. Or at least a cyborg. At any rate, she’s completely inhuman. A robot programmed to try to be Oprah, but honey, Oprah she ain’t.

Top Model used to be about learning how to work a catwalk, knowing your best angles for photos, how to talk to press, etc. Of course there was obligatory sentimentalism and drama, but all in all, it was learning how to be a fashion model from a fashion model. And it is there, I maintain, that Tyra Banks’ qualifications stop. At some point, though, she seems to have obtained the necessary qualifications to perform psychotherapy. “How have you been hurt in your life? Tell me about it,” she asked every contestant, trying to mask a vampiric glint. When exactly did emotional trauma become important to one’s ability to look good in couture?

A lot of other stupid stuff happened on the show, but sitting through those individual interviews was the worst. The mass appeal of voyeurism and sensationalizing real issues is a pretty obvious soapbox for reality television, and I know there’s the whole “they know what they’re getting into when they go on the show” argument, but ANTP plays more like a nature documentary than a reality show: it’s like a lion prowling baby giraffes. What ever happened to the good old days of superficial idolization of culturally-bound determinants of physical beauty?

We put our feet just where they had, had to go

2007-09-20T13:21:00.000-04:00

9/17/07

In my first real job
I have mastered the art of
non-dairy creamer
- Untitled Haiku composed on a Post-It, now stuck to my computer

When I watched Office Space recently, it had an entirely new [and almost utterly depressing] significance because I realized my professional life is kind of like Office Space. The traffic Murphy’s laws [the lane I am in is ALWAYS the slower lane], the inordinate anger at copy machines and bypass feed printing, clandestine mid-afternoon Minesweeper, ridiculous staff meetings… I never thought I’d be that guy.
In spite of allllll of my Monday morning ogre grumbling and alllll the whining my housemates must endure, however, I must admit I have reached a semblance of homeostasis, a truce with my inner sense of entitlement as a capable human with a college degree, and here it is: it’s kind of nice to not be invested in your work. I’ve passed the honeymoon period, and “put four years of hard work to work” bright eyed and bushy tailed motivation has been replaced by the motivation to do what I need to to not explode. Although I must admit there has been a selection of late afternoons in which explosion seemed a better option than looking at a computer screen for one more second.

I’m still not sure what all this means to my sense of self. How important is it to be good at working hard for something I don’t care about? I suspect it’s a necessary skill set, but I am also starting to think it’s more important to think about why I might be doing something I don’t care about. In my recent life especially, I have found that this why is more existential than my general character might suggest. I am pretty sure about how I feel concerning free will and our use/appreciation/manipulation of it, but I have also been shown with startling clarity the ways in which God situates me where I need to be. I like to think about it like a mason jar full of sand and different soils and pebbles—add water and shake things up, let everything settle and sort until the jar eventually stratifies—all the soil is with the soil, the pebbles are on the bottom (or the top; I’m not very good with life science stuff), and everything is laid out better than you ever could have done yourself. Order from confusion. Necessary chaos. [Is that what chaos theory is about? Probably not, but then again my only exposure to chaos theory was a very adolescent reading of Jurassic Park…]

Before I ended up in cubicle purgatory, I was pursuing what I then considered my dream job. I actually would still consider it a dream job, but not my dream job. At least, not right now. I only realized this after a series of events [and well-timed individuals] which, I believe, were necessary to my coming to this understanding. First, at the recommendation of the organization itself, I applied for the position (amazing job description, great pay, totally fit my qualifications) and was pretty irked when they didn’t call me back for an interview. This was not the first of such instances surrounding my “figuring out what to do post-diploma,” and half-desperation as I moved into a new city unemployed compelled me to take the one job I was offered (technically in my field, professional experience, entry-level in every way). Maybe I would appreciate the lack of personal investment required, the ability to leave work at work. And I do. But at the same time I feel like there are moments when I just know something, and the sense of just knowing I’m not supposed to be here—strike that, the sense that something just isn’t right and the hope that it means I’m not supposed to here because my brain is turning into Google-mush—meant I kept up my morning regimen of checking new job postings. And the original dream job, much to my surprise, reopened—and even more to my surprise, they called me to interview. So why was there a sigh of relief when I found out I didn’t get the job?

After a long week of anxious musings, I finally realized how that whole “it’s about the journey” thing might be working out. [This is unavoidably getting wayyyyy too Reader’s Digest/online-associate’s-degree-infomercial-ish.] On paper the dream job sounded like something I had always wanted to do—but to do it right now would mean breaking a commitment to one of the only things that stirs my ambitions right now and putting off one of the only things that stirs my ambitions all the time. Complicating the whole mess was the whole “what is four years of hard work for if not to get me this kind of job?” and the necessarily concurrent “what will everyone think of my four years of hard work if I don’t get this kind of job?”—not to mention the tugging notion that I had prayed for this sort of thing [which I had], so I was probably being a picky and ungrateful snot. I think I was talking to Amber in the kitchen when I said, “I just don’t know… this is the sort of thing I’ve always wanted to do.” And she said, “Yeah, but you don’t want to do it right now.” And I realized that was true—I’m not ready for “career.” Or rather, I’m ready to *try* to make room for other things, to build up some experience and education that probably won’t apply to my resume, to be patient and wait for the mason jar to settle—and to make friends with that cloudy unsettled feeling. I think God let me have my best laid plans so I could sort out why I don’t want them [and drive everyone around me crazy with obsessive discussion about it…but maybe they’re being taught how to have patience with a high maintenance roommate?]

And wouldn’t you know it, things will work out alright. I’ll keep making Post-It haikus for awhile, and I’ll try not to let a muddly jar keep me from being productive and at least mostly content. I’ll try to remember that I could not sort out any of these constructive conclusions until very recently [when I received a light at the end of my tunnel in the form of a great and exciting and unexpected new job opportunity] so I should probably try not be such a debbie downer at the depths of despair when other jars [finances, friends, singleness, stress, etc.] are being shaken. And maybe I’ll start making my own coffee in the mornings again with milk the way I like it instead of non-dairy creamer, because man I hate that crap.

I woke up cold for the first time of the season, this morning.

2007-09-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

9/13/07

When she bought a new car, my mom got a free year of satellite radio, the password to which I filched to listen at work in the morning—as Central Pennsylvanian radio is a dire situation indeed [Beyonce and Metallica on the same station?! What is WRONG with people…]

Some things I have learned from satellite radio:
BBC correspondents are much feistier than their American counterparts. If a reporter thinks someone’s story is lame, you’ll know it immediately.
Independent radio looovvvesss Spoon. Loves. About every third song on every indie rock station is Spoon.
Having your own satellite radio show does not mean you are a good dj. It probably means you are good at knowing people who work for satellite radio.
Satellite radio isn’t that great. Really nice for car trips, but I’d rather have an ipod, and as far as the workday goes, you can do better with free internet radio [xpn and npr are nice, Accuradio has considerably more variety AND you can skip unlimited songs.]
I find the Pandora thing, while impressive, less than ideal. When I want to listen to Sufjan I want to listen to Sufjan, not an obscure unsigned Canadian singer-songwriter with the same tonal qualities.

My method of musical enjoyment at the office, thus, given the constraints of an eternally-broken ipod and a crappy bandwidth, has been carefully honed into a perfect and uninterrupted [albeit somewhat complicated] practice: Sirius set to channel 26 in one window, y-rock on xpn in another, and Accuradio [Future Perfect Deep Tracks channel] in the third. A few cds queing in MediaPlayer. With a few quick clicks I maintain a steady playlist consisting only of things that I like.

I feel like this might say a lot about me.

concord grapes

2007-09-20T13:16:00.000-04:00

9/11/07

Today I ate concord grapes, and I didn’t remember if they were something I had ever eaten before until my front tooth skimmed the skin on the first globe. Then the teleportation was instant. I could still hear the bearer of grapes—“they’re only in season for a few weeks,” and “careful, there’s seeds,” but my eyes were closed and my mouth was flooded with the less firm fleshiness of homegrown produce. It’s wild to me how memory works, particularly those distant, distant memories you have forgotten to remember until you bite a grape or hear a song. I imagine now how the tiny seeds rolling around my teeth managed to trigger the neurons to pluck a file from way, way back in the “memories I have forgotten” records [located probably somewhere around the nape of my neck]—but at that grape-eating moment it was simultaneous: I was probably six years old and at my grammy’s house, where she grew concord grapes along with green pie-making apples and parsley and other things you could, if worried mothers weren’t watching, eat straight from the soil.