dirty south/rock'n'roll tragedy/hiptits

*clothe me, feed me
before i forget, i wanted to solicit suggestions for places across the bottom of this country where i could find food or thrift treasure. i'm driving across rte 10 in less than a month, and while i have austin covered, surely there are other places of interest in towns like mobile, AL, or new orleans, LA, or even in atlanta, which i'm stopping thru on my way north.

also, i want bbq and weird regional foods like the basque food i had in nevada and the steak place my dad and i went to in omaha that seemed frozen in amber from 1962. and yes, i will stop at the varsity in atlanta. fingers crossed their delicious hot dogs aren't deep fried and won't jizz on my car (see: wall drug. just what i wrote about, NEVER IN PERSON).

[photo: me wantee!]

*rock'n'roll dating
i was just looking at that site as it was linked via jezebel or gawker or somesuch, and let me say this; if you are in your 30s and put bad religion, blink 182, sisters of mercy, goldfinger, anal cunt etc. on your list of musical favorites, there is a reason you're single. and it's not because girls are like, "ew, anal cunt!", it's because you're a grown ass man who listens to pop punk and/or novelty hardcore. not that you should try to lure ladies in with john mayer records and then pull the municipal waste bait'n'switch, but still, if you can drive yourself to warped tour, you're too old to go.

*no fatties please
as most friends of the 'tee know, i'm not such a big fan of public nudity (name a publicly uncovered part of a stranger that's normally covered-- toes, nips, midriff, etc-- and i'll tell you just exactly how it makes my skin crawl). as such, i prefer the one-piece swim suit. to me, bikinis are like jimmy choos or $6000 handbags; they're supposed to the status quo of what women want, but i was sick that day of womanhood school, and now i just don't get the appeal. i am an advocate of keeping the gut personal and private. hell, most men should be wearing one-pieces. and fuck a lot of man flip-flops. but we don't need to cover the issue of toe beards again.

long story short, life is hard for the one-piece shopper. first, you have the brands that seem marketed to those ladies among us who are so fat that they have to wipe their ass with a special tp wand (you thought i was gonna go with washing their backs with a rag on a stick, i know, but too easy).

nobody under 200 lbs wants to buy something called a "miracle suit," but i swear, this brand dominates the one-piece market. as if it wasn't hard enough to buy bathing suits, you now how to go into it knowing that it takes a fucking MIRACLE for you to fit into one and show your face in public. the other nightmare that keeps popping up is "storm in a D cup." i get the pun, but i feel like the only women who would buy this brand are current and/or former hosts of the view. and the lady who killed that poor 15 year old girl on myspace. and maybe tyra when she's fat.

but the worst thing i've seen this year is the following make of suit-- it's usually sold as the sole, sad, token one-piece in a pile of bikinis by designers who hate the fuck out of some fatties, or probably women in general.

most people call it muffin top, but that's at once cutesy and weirdly sexual, as it's on top of one's "muffin," and i hate when people use cutesy terms for penis or vagina (vajayjay? not okaykay, and about 17 months away from being funny). moi, i prefer the term stated up in the title-- "hiptits." because they're like boobs on your hips that hang over your pants, and while they're worse for the fat (especially in this era of mid-hip jeans), nobody is immune. except the supersickly thin. like model-era tyra.

so this bathing suit is basically a one-piece with hiptit windows. and really, if you don't care about showing off that part of your body, wouldn't you just buy a fucking bikini in the first place? belly button shame? it looks like your fat broke through the spandex levee of the suit and is now oozing to freedom, sending bikini-clad, barely legal teens to run for their lives so they don't catch fat.

[photo: even this model has hiptits! somewhere, a gay designer is laughing and filling his winter line with more trapeze dresses.]

[tangent! people sometimes get mad at me for throwing the term fat around so freely, but fuck it-- some people are tall, some people are olive-toned, some people are (different levels of) fat. fat and ugly aren't the same thing, and shouldn't be seen that way-- ugly is a straight up insult, fat is a factual state of being. people who call themselves ugly are fishing for support and compliments, while some people who call themselves fat are just telling it like it is and don't give a shit what you think.

if someone has a higher BMI than they should and wears a size 14, they're allowed to call themselves chubby because *that's what they are,* and when you scorn them for saying that about themselves, you're basically saying they should be ashamed of their bodies. which is why most women won't admit to their chubbs outloud, because they're locked in imagejail thanks to hardy seconds of denial fed to them by thinner people who are trying to help. a better reponse to someone talking about their D cup hiptits is, "whatever, yr lookin good, who gives a shit."

(and ps, i don't care what you weigh, keep your fucking clothes on and wear closed-toe shoes, just long story short, let's just destigmatize the world fat. hiptits and tp wands for everyone.)]

whatever, i hate this bathing suit.

sorry this was the bloggiest thing i've ever written. you'll hear nothing from me 'til i get back from sf.

"fuck"+wnyc+honey bunches of oats = HEAVEN ON EARTH

i know this has been posted everywhere today, but seeing as today was another downer for the 'tee, i thought i'd spread the love as watching this clip 15 times in a row is what kept me from hunting down my building manager and smashing his bong over his head (not that i've ever met him, but i might recognize him by his stench) (i just rewatched that s3 episode of buffy where oz can smell willow's "fear" and then finds her "having smoochies" with xander, and i put fear in quotes because you watch a show so many times and your thoughts can't not turn dirty, especially given the context of smoochies).

this clip is to me what that haitian weatherman clip was to the rest of the world. enjoy!

pt. 2 : nh, ma

[photo: didja ever notice that a honey bunches of oats box makes a good makeshift target? i sure did! fuck you, you delicious son of a bitch!]

[my father now refers to this breakfast treat as "honey bunches of lead."]

[also, i painted my nails black'n'badly so i'd stop biting them so much. and because i'm going to be mentally 14 until i die.]

NH:
the good part of forgetting to write this up until now? i also forget most of what happened, so consider the fat trimmed, baby!

as you might recall from when i started this travel summary 104 weeks ago, i came to nh just in time for ice out, which was sort of bittersweet in that i'm never really there for the ice except when it's just forming or on its way out. because i love to kayak around the lake's great island, but you're not really allowed on the island unless you live in one of the houses there, and i'm kind of dying to know what's in the middle, since from a kayak, you're really limited to the shore view. i know it's a small hill, but is there playground equipment on it? a mayan temple? the head and torch of the statue of liberty (i love you, dr zaius!)?

[photo: not the great island, or an island period, but still great.]

so, since nobody lives there in the winter (there's no bridge, and, as should be clear by now, the ice isn't always on your side for travel), i've always wanted to take advantage of the ice to walk over and check it out. alas, another year's passed where it was not to be. on the other hand, it was freakishly warm, so i got to tan on the dock with buzzo (who did not tan, but snoozed under a tree and woke up polkadotted with sap. oy) next to floating plates of tinkling slush. and to think that when i get back, i'll be in swimmin mode. oh my sweet new hampshire, what compells me to go. sigh.

also, see photo, i shot m'gun.

but other than that, i thrifted, worked out my summer work hours at the store, saw my few friends...i was going to mention this before in my discussion of danzig/casual male xl(ucifuge), but the powerhouse mall in west leb has a ladies clothing store called "daffodil," and a bigger ladies clothing store (ladies are bigger, not the store) next to it called "daffodil woman," which just seems odd to me. i went to that mall with my parents to eat at lui lui's, which is like an i-talian chili's but much less offensive to your intelligence and much more delicious to your mouth.

[photo: i am so cute and clumps of me smell pine fresh!]

somehow, i was reminded of a teacher at my high school named mrs. white (alas, as you'll see, i can't change her name) who worked in the health center (boarding schools don't have a nurse's office, they have a health center, which is the same thing, but bigger and licensed to distribute ritalin to those precious spoiled assholes who got bullshit prescriptions and made sport of snorting it in their dorm rooms).

right, so while mrs. white was running one of the sex and drugs classes that freshman had to take, teaching the class on womantimes, she got her womantimes, and in eponymous pants, no less. and the mood of the class, being comprised of 14-year-old girls, hovered somewhere between totally amused and extremely horrified.

and she got mad at one of my friends, who was her student but also her advisee (my school had student/teacher advisee groups, keep up), for not telling her what was happening. my parents and i were trying to figure out tactful ways one could've informed her she was bleeding her (namesake) pants, and the best we could come up with were:
-mrs red, i have a question? sorry, easy mistake.
-mrs white, are the red sox playing a home game? (in your pants?)
and, bringing it full circle,
-mrs white, are you trying to prove you're qualified to shop at daffodil woman?

then i went back to boston and we all began preparing for passover, which is like jewish thanksgiving, but with god, and in which those feasting play the native american-esque role.

MA:
so aside from the above explanation and a positive review of the meal and time spent with family and old friends i rarely get to see, there's not much to add about boston. i went walking with my mom in the magical woods behind the mall, and bought something at the gap for the first time since 8th grade (my one stop shop for kurt cobain-y stripy t-shirts!), and played tennis with my dad at harvard next to my favorite kind of harvard doubles game, balds vs. hair'ds.

but one cool thing was when i went with dad to pick my sister and her husband up at the airport, we had to wait in the new (well, new to me) cellphone lot at logan, which is right on the water. and even tho i lived in boston for my first 18 years, i'd never seen the city like, well, a tourist, essentially. it's pretty! and from a distance, you can't hear people screaming at you in their cars!

[photos: the stub end of the hub, southie from the sea/an accent by the ocean]

so i came back to LA, went to see tim & eric awesome tour, had fine cheese with friends at the getty, saw a preview of tr0p1c thund3r (get ready for "you only love me for my farts" to become the catchphrase of the summer) (also i'm afraid of universal people finding me over google and suing me for spoilering their catchphrase).

but then i got sick, then entered into several shitstorms, so i can't wait to navigate out of these choppy, fecal waters, first to sf next week, then all the way back to nh in june. ang and ashrita came to visit during the eye of the storm, which was a great boon to my sanity, but still. anchors aweigh, bitches. oh my sweet disposition, may you one day carry me home.

[this post is in memory of ryan adams' blog. shine on, you crazy (no really, literally, crazy) diamond.]

? & !

?:
vs.

just curious.

!:
i have dreamt of this. oh, yes.

just had to share.

keith-style special comment: gta, fyi

in one of the zillion new yorker magazines i came home to when i got back to ca, there's an article about human trafficking in moldova. while such trafficking includes men sold into construction work in europe that amounts to indentured servitude, it's mostly about women sold into prostitution. it's fucking mindblowing. but then, when i read another of said stacked magazines, entertainment weekly, and see that grand theft auto 4 gets an A, it all makes sense.

[photo: yeah...not knowing whether to laugh or cry.]

i know GTA is just a fun game to play, but here's a more funner game-- take statements and replace "women" with "black people." eg: "in grand theft auto, you can fuck a black person, and then get extra points by murdering them afterwards." man, now that's an evening spent with playstation that would be worthwhile!

or if you want to play my game on the political spectrum, let's discuss one of my favorite 527s spawned from this election cycle, the anti-Hillary group Citizens United Not Timid (cunt cunt cunt!). now, let's plug it into the game to make it even more hilariouser! how 'bout an anti-obama 527 called National Institute for Government Growing Ever Respected. oh shit, it's the N word y'all! fuck a lot of the C word! (and then be rewarded for killing it afterwards!)

ok, game over. i often tell people that when it comes to identifying with waves of feminism, i'm pretty much a suffragette-- most of my objections with third wave feminism's approach to what amounts to self-objectification, plus a lot more insight that my little brain is not capable of, is expressed ariel levy's "female chauvinist pigs" (read it, ladies and gents!). either way, i am admittedly old school.

the fact remains that, no matter where you fall on the feminist spectrum, we have to remind ourselves that feminism is not a first world problem, nor is it astoundingly complex. you can talk about the madonna effect, vaginal imagery in literature, whether to spell it womyn or wimmin, whatever, but at the end of the day, it comes back to the bumper sticker saying that "feminism is the radical notion that women are people." and in a world where women are depicted in (admittedly addictive) video games as objects one should fuck and kill, can have a valuable and admirable (political) career ignored based on gender, and, most disgustingly, are bought and sold on the black market like pairs of levi's, then that notion is still more radical than it should be.

obviously, my little game doesn't serve to compare the struggles of women and minorities, just to show the level of hatred against women in popular culture to which we've become completely desensitized. when i ran hockey (see photo), i used to tell guys that misogyny is like chlamydia-- a lot of people have it but don't realize until they find themselves checked on it by a doctor. or, in the case of misogyny, by a loud hockey she-commish who wants to know why, in a co-ed league, a grown-ass man has no women on his team (which is why, when you see said photo, you see a bunch of rad ladies [sup, ali! sasha! molly! lady i don't know!] amongst the dudes). so just don't let things like GTA and that hateful 527 go unchecked. because when we get comfortable with those notions, we don't notice where they lead. in the end, it's not just those women in moldova and elsewhere that are robbed of their freedom and their lives; we're all robbed of our humanity.