S n a r k A t t a c k

Satan Said Dance

Devil children!

The balloon = freestyle brow pop-locking.  Genius.

Eye of the Tiger

I officially want Lasik. 

Everyone says they wish they'd done it sooner, including a friend who pulled the trigger on the surgery after a handful of her friends went AS her for Halloween and she realized the one thing that pulled all the costumes together was the black-framed glasses they were sporting.  Personally, I would be flattered. You're an icon! I told her, but she'd have none of it, got the surgery and has raved about her perfect eyesight ever since.  I would get it in a heartbeat (once I save up all my pennies) except that I do worry about a) an earthquake at precisely the moment the laser digs in, rendering me blind, and b) that episode of the Simpsons where they go to the future and Flanders is blind.  When asked why, he says, "Lasik."  <shudder>

 

The View from the Afternoon

I know we need the rain, but man, sometimes a hike on Mt Tam just hits the spot.  (Right now, this same hill should be nice and green.)

Mad About the Boy

So we've had the magazine for days but finally I look at it, and I mean really look at it.  Though it's  covered with text, I see it, right above the masthead: "commemorative issue."  Commemorative issue.  I think about this.  Commemorative.  Like, I should frame this?  Take an X-acto knife and slice right down along the binding, the blade making that cool pleasing sound, leaving me with, what?  A cover sans magazine.  

Now what?

A frame.  Yes, I should frame this.  Put it up in a nice 8x10 - or better something bigger. Get some nice matte in there, something acid-free, something that will call out the key colors of the cover, stand up across the years.  Acid-free.  Archive quality.  But -

The cover is surely not acid-free, so... lamination.  I will seal the cover in plastic - UV protection included for a small fee! - and then, the matte, the framing, the - oh, a nice gold bevel would be nice, yes?   Really make this pop, make it something with gravitas, no mere magazine cover, no this is now the ne plus ultra of commemorative. 

And then, I project myself into the near future, my commemorative cover framed and hung in  a place of prominence near the computer, when I realize that the office is just a series of trails among the piles of paper, each pile with something of significance, each scrap worth saving, for when do you draw the line?   And I realize that with the internet, there is no need for commemorative covers.  One has but to press 'print,' and be done with it.  

The Professional

While the GF was freezing her culo off in Chicago, I was praying that an obscure '80's flick would live up to my memory of it:  "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains."  

HIGHLY SATISFYING. 

You know how there are those movies you saw as a kid and loved them and then when you see them years later, you think you must have been high on Pixy Stix because the movie sucks donkey balls and you begin to wonder how you graduated from the 7th grade?  (Ice Castles, I'm looking at you.) 

This was my fear, because the Fabulous Stains was one of those movies that I loved so much, but since I could never find it again, it became almost mythical to me.  It wasn't constantly being cycled on Starz or TNT like the loathesome Threesome or Rocky II or Twins.  It was elusive.  It was the Missed Connections of movies, the kind that made me wonder if perhaps I'd imagined the whole thing.  Diane Lane never mentions it; it was as though she arrived on the scene in The Outsiders.  Same with Laura Dern.  Of the oeuvre of girl-band flix, this one doesn't rank, which is all the more puzzling since, let's face, the girl-band oeuvre is pretty thin, all Satisfaction and - well, that's pretty much all the comes to mind right now.  And so I began to wonder if I'd conjured the entire thing.

But I hadn't - the movie was real and it held up.  Diane Lane - only 16! - was all scowly goodness.  Again, it's not the perfect movie but god, does it nail the universal desire to flee the confines of your small town and become a rock n' roll star, not to mention the art of media manipulation.  Rent it.  

Oops (I Did It Again)

Working in an office again has reminded me of something I'd forgotten about office bathroom etiquette, which is that women are terrified of going #2 in public.   A necessary evil, if you will, a system has arisen which allows a public #2 to happen while preserving a person's dignity.  Unfortunately, doing this requires everyone else to play along.  And we do:

You walk in, all ready to go and suddenly you realize that you are not alone.  Someone's sitting in a stall, all Boo Radley-like, just sitting there as quietly as you please, bowels on Pause, until you go.  There is no sound.  No breathing.  No rustling.  No let's-get-ready-and-roll-me-some-toilet-paper.  Nothing.  It's unnerving to be in a room with someone who's trying so obviously to be invisible, and maybe that's why I always feel like I've got to hurry.  "They're freaking out over there in the handicapped stall!  HURRY UP!  GO FASTER!"

And so I rush.  And every time I rush, I think that there are so very few women who don't play along (not counting Germans, who love to poop):  1.  Me, for generally, I don't care about other people and I also know that that woman cowering on the toilet is NEVER going to come out of that stall before I do because if she does, I might see her and learn that she converts food into feces.  She probably urinates too, the weirdo.  I could read the entire New Yorker and she'd never come out.  And, 2. Mothers.   They, who have seen everything that can come out of another person, do not care and will not only not play along with the whole poop/pee-shy game, but will go #2 loudly and/or fart loudly until you wonder how an entire horn section can fit in there, handicapped stall or no, and then they'll go back to work because they have to get home and cook dinner.

I LOVE that. 

Gonna Fly Now

You jackass.

I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday

Yesterday was arts & crafts day at the homestead, during which I picked up 20 pounds of shredded foam from the, ahem, foam store and used it to restuff the pup's bed.  She is old and arthritic; I am cheap and like to make things difficult for myself.  Thus, instead of buying the $100 dog bed I bought $30 worth of foam and re-stuffed her bed. 

You know how they do those studies saying that people eat whatever's put in front of them, regardless of whether they're still hungry?  (It involve a bowl of magically replenishing soup, which reminds me a bit of the Addition Soup from the Phantom Tollbooth - which in turn reminds me of chocolate chip cookies.)  This was the case with the foam, in which the bed liner was my stomach and the foam represented Stacey's Pita Chips and hummus.  

The bed is now so plump that it's having a hard time getting its pants to fit the pup needs help climbing onto it.

After dragging the remaining 18.2 pounds of foam into the garage, I started cooking.  I am like frickin' Martita Estewar, people.  All this in preparation of the night's Main Event:  the Golden Globes.

I love it.  They're drunk, for one, and even they know how meaningless the entire shindig is, but it's a good excuse to drink and network, while solidifying everyone's place in the entertainment world orbit: television folks in the back and the pretty, pretty film stars in front.  I adored Jeremy Piven trying to look subdued and mercury-poisoned, a look that would have been more convincing if HE HAD SIMPLY STAYED HOME.  Alas, the chance at another award proved too great, something that didn't sway Gabriel Byrne who beat out four actors better than himself, and who probably learned it while sitting at home on his couch.  No Michael C. Hall for Dexter?  No Hugh Laurie for House?  No Jon Hamm for Madmen? 

And while this would have been true if she'd lost yet again, I adore Kate Winslet and am thrilled she won for Revolutionary Road.  Haven't seen the Reader yet but I love that she proved Ricky Gervais right - make a Holocaust movie and the awards will come. 

The entire episode of Extras is great but here are the clips - the Holocaust scene starts at 2:30 or so.

 

D-D-Don't Stop the Beat

What's worse: getting your MP3 player run over by a car or being the one behind the wheel when said MP3 player is run over by a car?

This is why I never spend more than $30 on MP3 players.  I just know that some day I will find myself in the absurd position of running over it with my car.

In other news (and speaking of my car*), I would like to go pheasant hunting.

*I hate pheasants.**

**They come out of the tules and fly into the middle of the road, precisely at windshield height.***

***I have destroyed two windshields trying not to hit pheasants who were intent on some murder-suicide scheme.

Also, I should note that pheasants are delicious and just this last holiday the GF, my folks and I all partook of a lovely pheasant and shrimp gumbo at Plumpjack at Squaw Valley.  Man, doesn't gumbo sound good right about now?

Monday, Monday

The upside to doing contract work is that you only have to work the number of hours assigned.  The downside to being an uncommonly AWESOME contractor?  They forget you're a contractor and say things like, "Don't worry about coming in Monday after New Year's.  Take some time off.  Come in Wednesday."

I'm coming in today, because momma needs her money.  

I had that pre-Monday, post-vacation anxiety last night and was forced into taking a Tylenol PM.  We have a bottle of the Walgreen version which is the most Valley of the Dolls-inspired pill bottle I've ever encountered.  Their generic ibuprofen comes in discreet white plastic bottles.  Ditto the aspirin, Wal-dryl and Wal-itin.  The Tylenol PM knockoff comes in a giant clear bottle so you can see the orgy of happy blue pills inside.    

Aside from the Sunday night holy shit panics, I rarely have trouble getting to sleep so I use Tylenol PM sparingly.  For one, it scares the bejeebus out of me and number two, I once took it without giving myself enough time to sleep and woke up feeling like I was wrapped in cotton (I'm going to refrain from giving a Fellowship of the Rings reference but I think the geeks among you know what I'm talking about).  Right now, however, I feel pretty good.

Maybe yesterday's epic stroll through SF helped.  Here - have some pretty, pretty pictures.  I took this in the Botanical Garden in GG Park, a place I had never been because they don't - for obvious reasons - allow dogs and I'm almost never without A dog when I'm in GG Park.  (Click on pix for mindblowingly large versions.)

 

Also, did you know they have indoor AND outdoor handball courts in the park?  This is a view from the serving line back towards the entrance.  Yes, it looks like a Mexican jail.  I GET THAT.

And here's another of the world's most aggressively friendly squirrel. The Botanical Garden is full of them, and they run up to you like they're going to pluck your eyeballs out, but really they're just sizing you up to see if you're the squirrel-feeding type. 

No Parking on the Dance Floor

Laugh all you want, bitches, but since I started doing this, I haven't lost, had towed or otherwise mislaid the car ONCE.

Dogs of War

To anyone who has more than one dog: no shit.

Nazi Punks F*ck Off

Met T at the Variety Screening Room on Market Street last night to catch the special 'for your consideration' awards screening of "Defiance," a movie which is apparently about Jews brooding in the Polish forest.  I can't say for certain since we left after the 30 minute mark, our quota of Nazi movie cliches satisfied.  We walked out and the projectionist chased us out to verify that we weren't coming back - we were the only ones in the theatre which, instead of making me feel like a movie mogul made me think, We Have Made a Terrible Mistake, a thought that was confirmed as soon as Aryan poster boy Daniel Craig strode valiantly onscreen.  I was like, hey, there's a NAZI!  And then every time he did his best Tevye accent, I was like, oh, yeah, he's supposed to be Jewish.  Seriously, if he were the lead in Valkrie, I might be all over that but I'm not wasting my time watching a tiny dark-haired sprite goose-step around castles.  For that, I'd rather re-watch Lord of the Rings.  (Up high!)

In sunnier news, I think I'm getting the Changeling and Milk screeners later today.  I IM'd the GF about the screeners and she misread it and thought that the office was getting screens for lactating moms. 

I adore the GF. 

Terror Twilight

Just me or is the Atlantic Monthly on fire lately?  (Or rather, the Atlantic Monthly online, I should say, since I can't recall the last time I actually picked up a carbon-based version of the Atlantic. I'm getting images of me standing in Cody's on Telegraph, if that's any indication of how long ago it was.)  Andrew Sullivan was my go-to guy, my daily bear, during the election and I've officially added him to my Morning Coffee, along with xkcd and Talking Points Memo.

Here's the thing about blogs I like: they reinforce other blogs I like.  It's like having a conversation with my friend T in which we will suddenly find ourselves telling each other about the same thing that we read about in the same place.  Up until that moment, it's the most genius conversation ever, like we've re-invented cafe society and have come up with the biggest and best ideas while sitting around having beers at Toronado.  Think: cold fusion, re-conjured over Death & Taxes stout.  All good.  

Online, it's sort of the same but more passive and absent the beer (usually), and while Sullivan may read Boing Boing, and Xeni and Cory at Boing Boing may read Kottke, it isn't until I find myself jumping around all three sites, and finding they've all linked to each other that I think: I have read the entire internet.  It's depressing, like swimming in the ocean and seeing the same goddamn clown fish every where you go.

Of course, the flip side is that sometimes the referenced link is just too awesome, like this - which I have unfortunately already internalized and will think about, no matter where I stay. 

To the B&B in my future, I apologize in advance.

Gigantic

The GF alerted me to the video accompanying a CNN news segment which was purportedly about holiday shopping but instead should have been about the obesity in America.  Shoppers of walrusian proportions, wearing parkas up top and stretchy pants below, both men and women alike, lumbering through the just-opened doors of what appeared to be a Target or Wal-Mart.  The clip showed the first dozen or so shoppers entering the store and every last one of them?  Morbidly obese. 

At first I was sorry for them, but now I'm just inexplicably angry, and I'm not sure why.  Lord knows that I know how hard it is to lose weight.  I get that.  But every one of those people walking into the store was so incredibly, messily fat - why is it annoying me so?  All I could come up with on the drive in today was some bizarre combination of me feeling the pressure of paying for their weight-related health problems (if only indirectly), plus an even odder feeling that their obesity was simply unpatriotic.  How can we defend ourselves when we can barely get off the couch?  How can we call ourselves a superpower when we look, in Stephen Fry's words, like a bin liner filled with yogurt? 

I'll think on it.  Part of this may be because I just started Body Reclamation Project 5.0 last week. 

But still.

Time to Pretend

As a matter of fact, I DON'T just bound out of bed every morning, awaiting the moment when creatures of the forest will magically appear to dress me.  (Though, come to think of it, those of you who have met me wouldn't be surprised if I did get dressed by cloven hoofed animals.)   This morning just seemed darker and chillier than most, the kind of morning that makes it impossible to get up. 

I blame this on daylight savings time. It never hits me right after the time change but a few weeks later when you realize, holy cow, it's dark at 5:30.  This SUCKS.  And the body shuts down, and it's SO. HARD. TO. WAKE.  

But then I do, and the ritual involves strenuously extracting myself from bed. The downside to a pillowtop mattress is that the day begins with an athletic feat just to get out of bed, which I imagine looks athletic only when you allow that the term athlete applies to several relief pitchers whose BMI is somewhere in the 100s. Once I'm upright in bed, there's the exploratory foot on the floor as I feel around for anything furry down there that might be my 11 year old lab.  An eternal mystery to me, she can only relax fully when she's in danger of being trampled.  (The fact that she's the color of the hallway carpet means that I trip over her at least twice a day, and every time it  happens she gives me this offended look that suggests strongly that it's my fault.) 

Assuming I've navigated this far, both of the dogs will try their best to tag team me into falling down somewhere between the bedroom and the bathroom.  They will insist, under questioning, that it's merely their exuberance at the fact that I'm awake and survived the descent from the bed, but really, it's because they're starving, not having eaten for a whole TWELVE HOURS.   I am no fool: either feed them immediately or they will be forced to eat me.  I just wish they wouldn't look so giddy about it.

Then, there's coffee.  And while I brew it strong, it was no match for the morning's gloom.

Taking a page out of Hollywood wannabes, I am now attempting to 'fake it, till I make it.'  Join forth and see the circus freak as she now attempts her latest trick: sitting upright, eyes open, looking mostly awake.  

How many more months until spring?

All Out of Love

Recessions, apparently, rescind the country's longstanding No Fat Chicks policy.  As some hardworking economists have noted, in lean economic times, we like our centerfolds to have a little meat on them, while when times are good, we like 'em scrawny (save for the silicone-enhanced lady lumps up top).

Not to go all armchair anthropologist again, but, oh hell, I will: it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.  Walk with me, won't you?  Here we are, wandering about in the savannahs of Silicon Valley. Can you see it?  Tumbleweeds bouncing through the aisles of Fry's Electronics, their paths uninterrupted by salesclerks.  The five bedroom ranch style homes in Woodside, their golf carts left unserviced for DAYS.  Beltramo's running short on affordable bottles of Chateauneuf du Pape. 

Which women will be better off surviving such a heinous existence?   I'll tell you who: the big boned gal from Southern Alberta, the chick who was built for comfort, not speed, and fat-bottomed girls everywhere - they are all better-suited to carrying the citizens of tomorrow to term during times of hardship, whilst the skinny bitches from Newport Beach will be wasting away, dizzy from dehydration along University Avenue, whining for their VitaminWater.

And what better music to listen to while getting together with your zaftig salvation?  Your reubenesque reuben-lover?  Say it with me, Foghat fans:  Slow Ride.  Yes, while you might mosh while the Dow is up, when times are a-changin'  you most certainly will not want to be sedated.  No, you'll be killing me softly with one ballad after another, as during recessionary times, taste in popular music tends to be more Maniloony than Eminemilist.

Because when you're all out of love and you don't know what you got, you need something to believe in.  And as if you needed reminding, money changes everything.

Who Are You?

You know that bit about all black people looking alike to white people?   There's some truth to it, and it's not because you're a racist.  Well, actually it is, but not in the way you'd think.  It's evolutionary.  I'm not going to get into a whole big thing about WHY you're racist except to say that thousands of years ago when it was just your little tribe hanging out, making fire and hunting the woolly beasts of the jungle, dreaming of a day when someone, anyone, would invent something called a 'smore,' you were quick to recognize anyone who wasn't in your tribe because anyone who wasn't in your tribe was probably out to kill you, or sell you a bogus subscription to Guns N Ammo. Everyone who didn't look like you looked "Other" and your brain kind of left it at that.  (You, busily sharpening your arrowhead by the light of the fire: What's this 'gun' of which you speak?)

The same thing persists today - just another hangover from 99% of human existence where we were all just hunting and gathering and, yes, waiting for smores.  (You know what also persists?  The fact that women are generally better at finding something in the refrigerator.  It's SCIENCE.)  This is my way of saying don't feel bad when you have a hard time telling a bunch of people apart if they're all members of a race that  you had little or no interaction with.  You think Japanese don't all look the same to a bunch of Kenyans?

Which is why I have trouble distinguishing among white men.  Oh, sure, they're all over the t.v. and the movies - how can I not tell the difference?  Here's how: growing up, the only white man I really saw on a daily basis was my dad.  So, check: I know what my father looks like.  Fast forward to every law firm event I ever went to and I'd get introduced to a bunch of people, most of them white, most of them men, and when faced with a handful of white men, I realized I cannot tell them apart.  And the names don't help, so that eventually I just assume that someone is named Matt and someone else is Dave, which is, more often than not, the case.  I do a little better with white women, but not much, which is why when I'm out and about with the lesbos and I get introduced to a bunch of white women, there's a fair chance that I will have already met one or two of them and don't remember them because they all look kind of alike.   

So woman from last night, who I met several times previously, next to whom I apparently sat for an hours-long Pride Parade and hung out with on several other occasions in a variety of settings, I'm sorry that I not only failed to recall your name, but I also had no idea that I had ever laid eyes on you before last night.  And no, I do not need any more magazines.

Second Hand News

I hate t.v. news.  It's 2% news and 98% obnoxious ads for things I never want, hawked by people who are constantly yelling - and yes, I'm speaking to you, Mr. Oxyclean with the dyed-too-dark beard.   I can listen to NPR only when I'm the car, which makes getting dressed and listening to the news largely unworkable.  That said, since the gym gets lousy radio reception, I did watch the morning news today as I gamely attempted to stave off the coming obesity, finding myself lumbering about on a treadmill at our local Gold's Gym.  (Me, and one hundred men, mostly bears, and perhaps one or two lesbians and/or German women.) 

I always sound like Jane Craig (Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, one of the best movies everrr), when I'm watching CNN or MSNBC in the morning and they show a clip of something which is not informative, not illustrative of a larger issue and not otherwise affecting my life. 

To wit: this morning a woman was interviewed because her trailer had tumbled over the side of the interstate.  Was it a tornado?  A metaphor-laden weather system commenting on the current economic crisis?   No.  This woman had been evicted from the trailer park and the sheriff had demanded she move the trailer.  The woman gives $200 to a guy named Pumpkin to move said trailer but the trailer got stuck on the interstate where it was blocking traffic, which is the sort of thing that will happen when you hire a housecat to do a man's job.  The sheriff then swoops in with two tractors and they attempt to push the trailer off the highway but instead of sliding, the trailer goes ass over tea kettle, landing in a crumpled heap of pink insulation, cheap cookware and a tattered GED.  CNN shows all of this - in HD, no less - and then they interview the woman: "That's my house!  I know it ain't look like much but it's my home!  It WAS my home..."

Yes, but it's not NEWS.  They only showed it because there was tape of it, and because it's vastly more entertaining than the fact that the White House had apparently told Congress that it had $25 billion that it could give to the Big 3 automakers, suggesting strongly that the mattresses in the White House need to be given a thorough once-over because suddenly I'm thinking, where does the White House get money like that? And why is it just lying around?  And what do you mean:  you can just bail out other business with non-TARP funds?  Seriously?

But again, I'm unclear on the details because the crawl ended before CNN cut to a commercial for Active-On.

I HATE t.v. news.

How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

Seriously, you never called.

Very few even wrote.

A girl's feelings might get hurt, assuming, of course, she had any.  Oh, let's face it: I've been busy.  Perhaps you've heard - I got a job, loved the job, then joined a union, struck with said union, moved back to SF, got angry emails about my lack of picketing from 380 miles away, was soundly ignored by local strike captains, show got canceled, strike got canceled and then t.v. staffing season got canceled.  And don't even get me started on the election.

That's for another day.  In the meantime, hello you.  You are looking fine.  Just fine.