Just for once...
I think it would be cool if Denzel Washington was in a movie was was based on a completely false, made up story. I don't know for certain, but something tells me he should give fiction a try.
This isn't going to be fun
My UHaul mover's guide suggests I spend the next three weeks packing my house up one "Zone" at a time, a new one every other day. This was awesome when I decided to start with the kitchen, because it was a quick series of spoons and bowls and before I knew it I had a bunch of rooms shoved into Tupperware bins and stacked in the corner. This wasn't awesome when I needed to actually cook something today and realized OMG WHAT ZONE WAS THE SPATULA!?
Spidey Sense
I parked my car in a garage today and as I stepped out of it and shut the door, I turned to walk away and instead stopped dead in my tracks because of the quarter-sized spider hanging precariously between my car and the one next to me, dangling on an invisible spider high wire. Coming face to face with a dangling spider obviously fucked up every plan I had for the day.
For a long time, forgetting that I was in the garage to park my car and go meet someone, I stood there paralyzed by this beigey-colored spider with black spots and crooked legs, all splayed out before me like some sunbathing predator perched in midair by magic. I was completely STUCK between the cars watching this spider and wondering why spider maneuvering isn't covered in any kind of required college course, or at least for elective credit. That's a class I would have taken instead of ballet, which sure, I got credit for, but there's no way to pleia yourself out of parking garage spider showdown, is there? Wait, is there?
I had two options, three if you count my plan to befriend the spider and invite it to come hang out with me for the day, thereby neutralizing the threat of it crawling all over my face. I would get its email address and send it an Evite for a day of fun, I'd use a whimsical theme with cupcakes and a cartoon girl on a scooter. We could do Sudoku and it could put corn rows in my hair and we could play this other game I made up since I've been working from home called How Many Coke Zeros Can I Consume In One Day. The spider would probably win that game, with the 8 arms and all, and that ability to consume 10 times its body weight.
The more realistic options (since when do spiders have email?) was to either duck under the spider and quickly run away, hoping to God it didn't plan a sneak descent during my dropping and rolling and start crawling all over my face, or I could inhale deep, blow the spider out of my path and run for cover before it swung back to crawl all over my face. I tried out both of these options with a quick limbo under the spider and a test of my lung capacity, and neither seemed a practical solution.
I was out of options. I'd been standing there theorizing resolutions for Spider v. Human for over ten minutes, which is a long time when you're staring at something that's staring back at you with 8,000 eyes and practically as many appendages. There was absolutely no way I could get around this creature unless I actually got near it, which would only lead to the disastrous event of the spider possibly having a 1 in 100 chance of maybe coming close to being near enough to touch me. So I did the only thing left to do, the only practical thing to do. I got back in my car and moved ten spaces over.
Dear Makers Of Pringles Minis:
A great big thank you to whomever decided to make your product half its original size and sell it in resealable bags, because now I can eat twice as many chips faster than ever.
General Problems System
As an early Valentines present that doesn't involve flowers, candy, chocolate, fishnets or warming lube, this weekend I got what can only be described as The Fanciest Most Awesome Phone On The Planet™.
Not only does it have IM and Gmail and a 2 mega pixel camera and a whole side to it that flips open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard, it also makes calls for God's sake! Calls that don't end five seconds after being placed and then flash an error message on my screen that says, "Call dropped...general problems." Really, phone? General problems? Is that your way of saying, "My bad"?
Another thing this phone has is a little thing called a GPS navigator that not only gives me a ridiculously accurate map of exactly where I am, it can locate the nearest anything in a 5000-mile radius and then tell me how to get there. And when it's telling me how to get there, it speaks in a lofty British accent, which was so apropos this weekend as I used it to navigate myself to meeting Holly for brunch.
Sunday morning I'd only had my phone for 12 hours and I had just figured out how to send a text message on it, so when Holly told me to meet her at the Red Door Cafe I instinctively wrote back, "Ok, where is that?" What I should have said is, "OK!" and quickly opened up my navigator to find the place so that by the time I got off the train I was pointed in the right direction and ready to set foot into my route, lofty British accent emanating from my palm magically. It took me 20 minutes to remember that I even had a navigator with me but when I did remember I immediately popped the cross streets into it and waited for the magic.
The first thing it said was, "Service unavailable," because I was under water. Apparently the magic doesn't include any kind of SCUBA cell reception, so I waited five more minutes until it suddenly burst out at full volume, "PROCEED STRAIGHT AHEAD AND PREPARE TO TURN LEFT." Holy shit! This thing is amazing! It knew where I was already pointed! I jumped off the train with six minutes to meet Holly and suddenly realized I wasn't turning left until POINT FIVE MILES! Then I had another whole mile to go! Uphill! In the sun! WTF, navigator! Before I could even get my bearings the navigator said, "Recalculating route," and I had to stand there while time ticked by and it tried to figure out where I was. "Proceed to the next block," it said, "and prepare to turn left."
This was totally interesting because first and foremost, I have a really keen sense of direction. I'm fairly positive at all times whether it's north I'm facing or south, but this GPS lady was apparently not as keen with my positioning, perhaps because she's British WHO KNOWS. I knew California & Larkin wasn't towards Market St. at all, I knew this very well, yet there I was holding this GPS out in front of me with her voice blaring, "Proceed to MARKET STREET" and totally going along for the ride. She told me to turn left and I turned left, then she said to turn right and I turned right, then she told me to cross the street and START OVER AGAIN and I DID IT like a retarded ribbon dancer in an Olympic Tenderloin performance. This is proof positive that the most unnecessary objects can strip a man of his entire skill set if it has an Imogean Heap ringtone and flashes pink when it's in vibrate mode.
Twenty minutes later, after circling the block with my GPS navigator pointed to the sky as I furiously zig zagged from corner to corner to make it recalculate my route, the little British whore inside my phone said to me, "Proceed north five miles" and I about threw it in the gutter. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars went into me standing there in the middle of the block, sweating and confounded and screaming commands into a 4 oz. machine that could tell me how far away I was from a dry cleaners in Austin, TX but couldn't figure out a way for me to get there. "Recalculating route" was this phone's way of saying, "Uh, wait. Uh, just a sec. Uh, wait, don't move, I don't see you, stay there!"
By the time I reached the Red Door Cafe via taxi and a Thomas Bros. guide, Holly took a startled look at me all disheveled and frustrated and said quite sweetly, "Oh you look so...cute and put together!" I think I was gasping for air when I replied, "Thanks, ribbon dancing GPS."
Boston is SICK!
A few days ago I took my first trip to Boston. It was a short trip that didn't allow for much sightseeing, but I'm not really a sightseeing kind of person, so for me it was just the right kind of everything. Here's some stuff I knew about Boston when I hopped on my packed United airlines flight to go visit:
- It's in Massachusetts
- The pilgrims, yada yada
- Dunkin Donuts is there, which is important
Here's some stuff didn't know about Boston until I got there:
- Wow, they really like seafood
- Wow, they really drive kind of crazy
- Wow, they really talk like that
All in all, any stereotypes I had of Bostonians was wondrously proven through their hospitality, their amazing amazing food, and the city! O! The city, she is grand, brick aged to crimson perfection dotting the narrow streets that wind up the hill. The row houses, the river! One look at it all and you understand why so many died to claim her victory, because my god, they must have foreseen how many Dunkin Donuts could fit in a 6 square mile radius!
Aside from a small directional snafu involving me forgetting my coat on a 20 degree morning and this tiny bomb threat that happened a mile or so from my hotel, there were no close encounters with the bad luck and clumsiness I am prone to. I didn't even have much contact with real Boston natives until my last day when I was boarding my flight and had the kind of run-in the gods would only curse a person like me with.
There I was, having safely made my way through security at Logan airport without being felt up by anyone, and as I leaned down to zip up my boots I heard the man leading the security line shout out to me, "Ah cahn see ya brahwn und ees lay day."
I didn't really know what he said, so I just shot him a look and kept zipping my boots and he said again a bit louder, ""Ah cahn see ya brahwn und ees lay day!"
It took me a second to figure out that he was calling me a lady, but I still couldn't understand the first part of what he said. So I said, "Excuse me, what?"
The man shouted out to me again even though now he was standing quite close, and he mimicked a Californian accent while saying, "I. Can see. Your. BROWN UNDIES LADY!!!" At this point I understood that he was referring to the peekage of my unmentionables from atop my low cut jeans, quite possibly the last thing I want some guy in the security line YELLING TO ME while I was trying to zip up my boots.
Besides, such a vulgar representation of my attire was not only inappropriate, it was inaccurate considering the amount of money I'd spent on that very pair that wasn't even a set. I had to buy them separately at the after Christmas sale at Barneys, which automatically means they were expensive and should be treated as such. Given this knowledge I felt compelled to reply to him, "They're not (airquote)brown undies(/airquote), sir," mocking his uncouth description of my very expensive lingerie. "This is a delicate chocolate colored lace tipped with a contrasting ivory satin piping cut to a flattering fit with minimal coverage, ok?"
And he replied in a drawl dripping with clam chowder and baked beans, "I don't care what they is, lady, you gotta get them outtah here now or else one of us is gonna come pick you up by your chocolate stuffed ass crack and toss you to the curb!"
So I thanked him for his time and went on my way, chocolate stuffed ass crack intact. Thank you for having me, Boston.
Oh, m'god.
I'm in the market for a Honda Metropolitan. I went to a shop yesterday to check one out, a 2006 beatuy in red and white. Here's the conversation I had with the guy selling the bike:
Him: Yeah this one’s great. I got this from this guy I know, Cal, he got it a while back but he’d had one before that. One of the real f*@!y ones, you know from like 2003 or somethin', made him look like a big f*g riding around in it. Like a big gay toy he got in the Castro or somethin'.
Me: Oh…ha. Ha? (SHOCKED. Just shocked!)
Him:Yeah he used to ride it all over and he’d pass us on the street and we’d go, “Hey Cal, nice gay bike you got there!” and he’d just go “Fuck you guys I like it!” And we’d just laugh and say, "Ok gay boy! Go ride your little gay bike!" Fucking homo.
Me: Oh. Yeah, (getting really uncomfortable here…) UHM...
Him: Yeah we’d have a good time just bustin' his gay little balls about it. So anyway, we got this from him last year and he really liked it so I think it’ll be good for you.
Me: (changing the subject) Why’d he trade it in? Did he upgrade?
Him: No, he killed himself. Can’t imagine why. He was a good guy.
Owwww.
I kind of thought today was going to work out pretty well. There I was all chattin' on the iChatter machine and I decided to lean back a bit, then I flipped myself backwards in my chair. To make matters worse, I pulled my entire personal computer ensemble off the desk with me because when I started to fall I grabbed hold of my keyboard, which is of course attached securely to everything else on my desk.
It all came crashing down and I just laid there under my desk with all these highlighters rolling around on top of me.
Show and Teller
Tonight I watched an episode of this new show called Identity, where plain clothes contestants sift through sweeping generalizations to sociologically pigeon hole strangers on TV. It's a weird enough show with that premise alone, but add to it Penn Jillette as host and you have something that I don't think will last until Valentines Day.
The thing about Penn Jillette is that once I saw him on this other TV show on cable that toured extravagant celebrity houses. This was a number of years ago, way before tours of celebrity homes became the normal thing to watch on any channel at any given time, so it was obvious the producers of this show looked at each other when plotting the storyboard and said, "HHmmm. So, do you know any celebrities?"
A lowly P.A. probably replied, "I used to deliver papers to Mr. Penn Jillette, sir! Here's your coffee, sir!"
And thus a show was born, with a tv crew trekking through the deserts surrounding Las Vegas to find this mythical house owned by some crazy magician dude, is that what he is, anyway? I bet they expected something subdued and dripping with sin city royalties; what they got was a modified art deco bunker built on acres and acres of sand with a glittering sheet metal roof and Gothic wrought iron adorning every window.
Once inside this palatial enigma, Penn took a big chunk of time to show the viewing audiences at home his homemade S&M dungeon, complete with glossy latex sex swings hanging on bike chains from a blood red ceiling. This is where that P.A. is out getting coffee, forgetting to mention to anyone involved that he never actually went *inside* the house. The director is outside on the porch made of the remains of native Americans and crushed up goose eggs, weeping into the sleeve of the sweatshirt he got the night before at the Stratosphere.
Penn seemed unfazed by the sudden access millions of people had to his basic fetishes, he just wanted to stress that everything on camera was handmade by himself or one of his friends. Imagine the Christmas cards adorning the Jillette foyer each year! "Season's Greetings from your favorite latex sex swing and bike chain warehouse...in Las Vegas!"
The awkward part about this whole show was how casually Penn showed off everything in it, from the weird room built to mimic a police station line up room where he likes to take mug shots of his guests, to hallways plastered with freak show porn that had to be profusely pixelated for daytime cable TV. With just a nod and a flip of the wrist he'd point out his collection of mid-century snuff films lying peacefully next to a shrine for his dead mother. The camera followed in stoic resolution, cutting to commercial as soon as fucking possible.
Now, Mr. Jillette is on prime time network TV, playing sloppy seconds to Howie Mandel's loyal audience in what I can only hope is a self-medicated stupor of desperation and not an actual interest in prime time TV. But seeing him on my bedroom TV screen is uncomfortable after knowing he's somewhere in his bedroom, most likely with a stripper or two strapped to the ceiling and covered in multi-colored beeswax. I know far too much about him for a game show host! I don't need to have an Auto Focus party while people on TV are vying for a half million dollars by picking out which half dressed female on stage is actually a reigning cage fighter.
It's much like running into a friend at Good Vibrations and nervously declaring you're just there for adult-themed pasta shells, you know, for a bachelorette party and all. Your friend may look at you perplexed, and then just say, "Oh. Well I'm here for some lube and to see if they've got Michigan State Virgins 32 in yet. See you!"
Fairy Tales.
A few weeks ago I lost my favorite black scarf at a pre-Thanksgiving party somewhere, somehow. Before buying that black cable knit accessory, I'd never worn a scarf or felt the need to buy one. Once I did buy one, I suddenly understood what all the fuss was about. Scarves, you see, are pretty awesome things. They're long and warm and knot well, and if one were to plan an obvious kind of escape from jail or a mental institution and hadn't a bedsheet available, a scarf would substitute just fine. When I lost my scarf I was devastated thinking of that thwarted jail escape, and for a few days I wondered silently through my tears, “Alas, what was life like before my scarf??”
I haven't a clue.
Yesterday I opted to replace my scarf with a shorter, cashmere version of itself. It's short and gray and soft, exactly like a newborn bunny but without the threat of spontaneous urination or biting. It's not some cheap fleece thing from Old Navy, either. It’s cashmere, a word that describes itself through pronunciation alone. Being a professional blogger has it’s obvious rewards; it's a lifestyle that affords one the luxury of wasting hundreds of dollars on a piece of fabric to wear around one's neck for only two months out of the year.
The thing about cashmere I didn't expect, though, is that it serves two purposes beautifully:
- It keeps your neck warm, as a good scarf should, but in a very soft way.
- It also acts as a veritable food diary, cataloging in never-moving bits and pieces everything I've lead to my mouth today since breakfast.
There's a few pieces of cereal stuck to it, the crumb of a hunk of white chocolate, a splattering of tomato bisque and the remains of one saltine cracker used to spoon it up, and it's all sprinkled with seven shiny crystals of sugar from the donut I said I wasn't going to have but then had. These thing cling to cashmere like dirty, muddy orphans to the hem of Jesus himself.
Certainly, I could have taken my scarf off each time I ate something. But that would require the un-doing of my entire person, unwrapping and rewrapping and unknotting and folding, all things that lead to the alpha of my problems: a cold neck. I can't imaging going to that kind of extreme every time ate something, since then I'd spend my entire day doing just that. How much do I eat every day? How much does a normal sized cow eat each day, with all its stomachs and fields of grass? Multiply that by two and welcome to my world. No cow wants to be taking his scarf off that much.
So I'd rather just dip my very expensive piece of fabric in my tomato bisque and let bygones bygone themselves to death, so long as my neck stays warm. On the upside of things, I've come up with a pretty great alternate ending to the Hansel and Gretel story. It entirely eliminates the stupid witches gingerbread house plot and fits in more with modern storytelling that can influence legions of our youth with veiled metaphor.
Instead of leaving bread crumbs to follow back to their home, Hansel and Gretel just wear lots and lots of cashmere. Then, when they're lost in the forest and starving because they learned from me that it’s best to eat whatever food you have as quickly as possible, indigestion be damned, they'll be able to look down their tear-stained cheeks and spy a million remains of bread stuck to their clothes. They'll celebrate by eating everything they've got on to gain enough sustenance to find their way home, but then it'll catch up to them that they just ingested yards and yards of synthetic fabric, and they'll die.
Naked and alone.
Pretty awesome, huh?
