bullshit / pt. 1 : nyc

*sup! TANGENTORAMA!
pt. 1: dradamsfilms.com
first of all, hurrah that ryan adams' blog is back, even if it was briefly and it's got this moronic metal theme whatever. i know people hate him (i kinda do!), but i wish he didn't try so hard to be cheeky and "likable." nothing is less appealing than people who try so fucking hard, and i should know, because this is me ages 14-18 (to now? who knows, at least i've stopped trying hard enough that i don't even pay attention anymore). so if you like posting pictures of yourself, and writing rambling poems, and playing with imovie, fucking do it. sure, it's narcissistic and often wanky, but that's yr choice, do it with pride. answer to no one. and please keep updating because my life is so fucking empty.

pt.2: glenn danzig
i think i walked by his house the other day, but ever since his infamous pile of bricks was moved/stolen/disappeared, i'm not sure. for those who don't know, danzig (glenn, diminutive former singer for the misfits ((for those who really don't know, which is fine, you have lives)) lives in los feliz in a house that looks like the munsters was shot there, or at least that someone was literally shot there, since there's a hole in the roof and a (former) giant pile of bricks in the front yard, and also a famous story about him hiring people to make his gate more creaky and spooky to complete the overall aura of "boo! i'm danzig!" anyway, the bricks are gone, so if anyone can give me his address so i can find his brickless palace, i'd appreciate it. ("i stole your goddamn pile of bricks! you better think about it baby!" still funny.)

anyway, there's a picture of danzig and his eponymous band (from 1988) on dr. adams' blog, and unless he's standing on, say, a pile of bricks, he somehow managed to find 3 musicians who aren't just as metal as he is, but as short. did he hold auditions with a plywood sign that said, "you must be this tall to join my band" with a chicken holding up his wing to all of 5'4"? there are these stores around socal called "casual male xl," which always make me think of international male, so i think they're filled with sized 8xl gay pimp gear. but are there stores called casual metal lilliputian so danzig and henry rollins can find just-my-(adorably tiny!)-size black pants? it boggles the mind.

[sorry i had to find this ripped off copy, but still, brilliante).



pt. 3: mazel tov heather / no man no (allowed to) cry
[i loathe bob marley's music (controversial!), but friend-o-the-'tee heather once dated a guy named jimjim who was maybe the biggest stoner i have ever met in my entire life, and when approached by a marketing researcher who asked him what he thought of when he thought of bmw (the car), jimjim coughed and said, "bob marley and the wailers. nice." heather just got engaged to a guy who isn't jimjim (a major red sox fan from nh, no less-- score, heather), so congrats to her and her beloved. and note to the ladies: never date a guy who owns bob marley legend, aerosmith's permanent vacation, and snoop dog's doggy style all at once and still puts them in heavy rotation. you'll thank me later.]

another friend was telling me about how her man called her during a long-distance fight, so i wanted to take a moment to do a public service announcement for the lads out there in the audience tonight: dudes are not allowed to cry unless a parent or your dog has died, and maybe at the end of the movie rudy. but seriously, nothing is more unappealing and boner-killing than a grown-ass man sobbing like a baby with a full diaper. now, i used to be a hair-trigger weeper, but between having almost nothing left to cry over (new insults to my appearance have pretty much run dry, my dog's holding on, i don't watch ER anymore) and being so dead inside it's starting to smell, i'm more of a shrugger and ignorer. don't tell me men should be in touch with their emotions-- i hate emotions! the fewer emotions out there for either gender, the better. get it together, man! and don't start a metal blog.

pt. 4: losing steam
should i bother mentioning how funny the new harold and kumar movie is? ps, kumar, call me.

*OK! my stupid trip home!
pt. 1: NY:
i hate writing about my ny trips, because they're mostly made up of seeing friends, eating my favorite foods, and marveling at ashrita's indie rock existence. anyway, that's not the stuff for public consumption, but i will say that i went to the brooklyn museum for the target sponsored free saturday night mirakami dealie with kesone and her husband chris, and even tho it was a zoo and i didn't get there in time to even get into the exhibit (altho i did see judy chicago's "vagina feast," or whatever it's called), i loved going because never in LA would you see an art museum busting at the seams with people of all ages and races and walks of life. and i know it was free, and on a saturday, and featuring an artist affiliated with kanye, but even still. apparently, every free first saturday is a zoo, kanye or no, so suck it, los angeles. enjoy the grove.

[photo: a shitty picture of the melee outside the bk museum. you can almost make out the giant creepy sculpture inside (where you can also purchase louis viuton bags emblazoned with the same image).]

oh, and kesone and chris have achieved "the dream"-- a 2 bed/2 bath. and a terrace! so jealous. congrats, my adult friends! you give the rest of us hope!

oh, also, one of my favorite cousins, jen, got married to a guy named adam who fully charmed me at the rehearsal dinner, so mazel tov to them, and yay for me to acquire a new relative i don't hate. also the wedding was great because i love my jersey cousins, plus, there was pie.

ok, nh is waiting til next time so i can drag out this new content for as long as possible. get stoked for gun pictures tho! and tales of matzo!

prelude: plugs / sox / mini review: black postcards

[photo: this is what's called "ice out." it's when the lack thaws and the ice pulls away from the shore, not what ice says at the end of american idol.]

[more on nh next entry.]

*plug tunin'
i swore to myself i'd never add to the internet's utter bullshit content, so excuse my silence/lack of posts about getting sick of my own cooking and joining the sad, sweaty masses that joggingly circle the silver lake reservoir/concrete pit. but! while i was treading water, friends were ever so busy! observe:

-cat tyc and i used to work together in the soft skull bookstore that was located in tonic; the store was formerly run by incommunicado press, and after soft skull got booted/had a board coop/temporarily imploded, the store and its famed book cave moved to brooklyn and i think the old space became a coat check, and not so long ago tonic was shut down by the dreaded LES condo cancer...either way, not so long ago, cat moved to portland and went to film school and now she's up for this rad award for a video she made. so vote for her, won't you? cat's video is your new bicycle!

VOTE!

-rebecca woolf's book is now out and available! and her new baby'll be available this winter, i think, which is insane, but whatever, oh the miracle of life and the wheel in the sky keeps on turning etc etc. rebecca's one of the only people i've met in LA who i'm not afraid of offending because when i first met her in nyc years ago she showed me the scars from her breast reduction. she also took a maternity-like thrift coat off my hands that i never wore. quel foreshadowing! go buy her book so her baby tk won't have to go barefoot!

BUY!

-amanda got a story published in a literary journal! she and i went to college together especially for the purpose of learning writery, but unlike other writers (me! me!), she's always driven to improve, and never skips other people's readings or events, and loves all god's creatures (DOGS), and is not afraid to live in harlem above columbia where the murders used to take place. anyway, here's her story, which was so good i felt like i'd been there, and given the number of bk parties i've been to (the last one = a few weeks ago), i might have been, cept for the fact i don't drink or agree to be in the same room with anyone i used to date.

READ!

-also, diana's selling janome sewing machines now at make workshop! amy baker had a baby boy! my old old friend billy designed lighting fixtures that will be sold exclusively at abc carpet and home! some guy cursed the yankees with a t-shirt! amy acker was cast on dollhouse! teeter's got a man who's never seen the golden girls! my mom's car, ha malkah latifa (that's hebrew for queen, fyi) is soon to have over 175k miles on it! my dad still has a mustache!

REJOICE!

*event! dodgers/sox exhibition game, 3/29
[photo: my people!]

long story short, we lost. long story long, i went to a dodgers/red sox exhibition game at dodger's stadium with my friend lizzy and her two friends who were sisters and asian and when i said i couldn't tell dice-k from the other japanese pitcher because i'm racist they thank god thought it was funny. even tho lizzy is from LA, she is just crazy amazing genuine, and her love of the dodgers is 100% dedicated and true, and we all know how much i love and respect superfans the world over. after all, a sports fan is a really just trekker for a certain team. just with less of a stigma and a smaller chance of wearing glasses.

[btw, remember, the stereotype of LA people is that they are fake, but i don't think it's fakeness so much as an inability to relate to other people after spending 99% of their lives hermetically sealed in cars, offices, homes, etc, ie, they aren't being disingenuous, they just go blank when forced to share air with another human being and wonder when tv became so lifelike.]

i am coming to terms with the fact that the sox game i went to 15 years ago will probably be my last at fenway park (i don't know who you have to blow to get tickets these days, but i bet even the act of felating this someone has a long line and will cost you $200). still, dodger's stadium was crazy nice, and they offer dodger dogs in turkey meat (i am such a protein lesbian, because i do love any animal with a breast), and i got to sit next to the bullpen, even if it just meant watching all the young pitchers warm up before going out onto the mound to suck.

[photo: somewhere in there is dice-k NOT PITCHING.]

the night before was the big exhibition event at the coliseum to honor the 50th year the dodgers have been in LA since leaving bk (a day my mother still mourns), and at that game, the sox kicked their ass. but the game we went to was just a bullshit exhibition that commemorated nothing except a chance for the sox to try out their youngest arms with no risk to their standing. but ya know, whatever, i love going to baseball games, the food was delicious (and astronomically fucking expensive!), and lizzy's nephew was conned into cheering for the sox, so all was not lost.

*mini review: black postcards, by dean wareham
i have a friend who is a record nerd who refuses to even listen to bands with members who have wronged his friends. he is friends with damon and naomi, ergo, he hates luna and all dean wareham forever. for those who don't know, dean, damon and naomi made up a band called galaxie 500 that put out 2 very good albums and 1 good album in the late-'80s early-'90s. but also for those who don't know, if you didn't know that, you probably won't want to read this book in the first place.

liz phair reviewed "black postcards" in the times, and she loved it, but she also once wrote a letter to the same publication in response to a bad review of her s/t sell/out album that compared the author to chicken little, so her cred is now shot on the songwriting and times writing fronts. anyway, she said the book is rock n'roll, and in a way it is, because mr. dean is sort of an unabashed asshole, as are more lead singers, except they're usually more abashed than he, or at least less self-aware of their assholery. they are tortured or ignorant assholes, and dean is a placid asshole. such is the life of a harvard graduate.

[huge tangent: speaking of tortured assholes, i cannot stop reading ryan adams' blog. it's like strapping on a virtual reality helmet and experiencing pure mental illness. all mania, all the time. i have a weird stockholm syndrome thing going on with ryan adams; i know he's a crazy dickfaced asscunt, ok ok every rock journalist in america, i get it, but while stuck in my car or my office or the city of los angeles as a whole, i find that his songs have this comforting aspect to them, a warm nostalgic frequency that brings you back to a safer, simpler, funner, broker time that you've never actually probably lived, like watching "roseanne" at its prime or most of the movie "bull durham."
{photo: i want to assert my presence with authority!}

a place where there are screen doors, pants are high-wasted, the cereal is generic, it's always summer, everybody drives a piece of shit car, there are several emotional moments in parking lots, and everyone's drinking beer from the can. have you ever heard the old whiskeytown song "empty baseball park"? fuck it, dude. it's like a portal to that place, but when you take the portal through a whiskeytown song or a ryan adams song or a cardinals song or a pinkhearts song or any of his 403301 bands, the price is, ryan rides shotgun.

{photo: one day, this might not seem so funny.}

and the thing is, on his blog, he's trying so hard to be liked or even just acknowledged while at the same time making fun of himself and talking about how lonely he is and how nobody should like him...whatever, it makes sense in crazyese. in nostalgia town, he and i are drinking cans of beer in a parking lot wearing light rinse denims at night while sitting on the hood of his shitty car. but in this world, he is a sad pretentious guy who shits out great songs sometimes and i have no choice but to refresh, refresh, refresh.]

dean wareham, on the other hand, unrepentant asshole he is, is also a humorless asshole, and that's where the problem lies. it's not that the book is totally dull and jokeless (if you like your humor drier than a stale biscuit covered in hot sand), it's that he is so fucking serious about everything, so when he says he never wanted to be a rock star, you wonder why he's so dedicated to all things being in a band. i mean, the diaries he must of kept over the years to remember half of this shit have to be incredibly thorough, whereas most dudes i know who've been in bands and toured, aside from whining about how lonely it is, can only really remember that one time they had a contest in the van to see who would take a shit in a plastic bag.

[photo, l-r: dean wareham (casual asshole) and britta phillips (a perfectly nice woman i'm sure who mr wareham left his wife for). missing: a shirt.]

so on the one hand, when he talks about leaving galaxie 500 because damon and naomi patronized him and formed a voting block that made band democracy impossible (the two were a couple since high school, and are now married and in their own, eponymous band), you sort of believe that it wasn't just because he wanted the spotlight and more money. on the other hand, you sort of don't. and again, if you don't like galaxie 500 or luna, you probably don't care. if you do though, "black postcards" isn't totally not worth reading, but it's not very juicy. dry things usually aren't. nor are assholes.*

*-sane ones, anyway.

soon, i swear, i'll detail my trips to boston, nyc, and nh, and back to boston again, but for now,

***SPECIAL BONUS! REMORSEFUL MUXTAPE FOR YOU!***

(of random, mostly mopey songs from my own mixes of the past year! )
(yeah, the fine print is always a bummer.)

and happy passover! exodus have never been so delicious!

a belated valentine to the man in my life

aka, keith olbermann.

[a man so patriotic, the flag doesn't give him a boner, it IS his boner.]

oh, keith. the days have been so long as of late; i haven't been sleeping well, i'm stuck in LA without travel for at least another month, my dog recently squatted and peed on my bathroom rug while i was standing 2 feet away which tells me he was sleepwalking at the time and dreaming not just about being outside, but about being a girl. i keep getting sick and writer's blocked, buzzo keeps getting weirder and harder to clean up after. i'm fed up with nyquil, with my crappy cooking, with the dolor of my day to day. but at least at the end of the day, as the blue cloud lifts and i prepare another shitty dinner, i know that you'll be there for me. in my tivo. and we will make dinner and recover from cold medicine and hate bill o'reilly as one.

you're like jon stewart, but you don't mug, and you have to be taller, and you don't have a bunch of disappointing correspondents (unless you count the guy who made the "pimped" chelsea clinton comment, and i admit, i also don't like how flirty you seem to get with rachel maddow, who has a semi-gay haircut but since i've taken to cutting my own bangs/am one pair of jean shorts away from looking like the og early 90s not-blonde indigo girl, who am i to judge, but still, you better just pretend she's gay because if catch you making eyes at her one more time i'm gonna cut a bitch.)

[baby, it's cool, i'll go get you some of those trader joe's choco-pretzel balls you like to help you relax. and notice i didn't "shush" you, because that shit won't fly with my girl. bitch, i know your life. now, let's play oddball.]

let's break this down simply; danny was a character on sports night, and if his dream dude status weren't proof enough of his being completely fictional, danny actor josh charles' current run as he-nightmare on "in treatment" (a show that's about as amusing as watching flashing christmas lights if those lights were assholes) really hammers home that there could be no danny in real life. all hope is not lost, however, because, as we all know, sports night was based on sports center, a show i've never watched (when not trapped on jet blue during baseball season), but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if casey and dan had real life counter parts, they were dan patrick and yourself. you, with your references to mystery science theater and your take charge "special comments" and your ability to talk to pat buchanan without puking your face and soiling your always-stylish tie. and, unlike danny, you wrote a book when you 14, plus you've been on the simpsons, nevermind that i could spend a whole weekend just lounging around in your eyebrows.

[let's also ignore your whole weirdness with my girl hilz ("which hillary is it today"? the one who's reacting to a statement in context. sometimes she's placid, sometimes she's working people up at a rally, sometimes she's pissed at an obama press release...it's not like she's for the war one day and a socialist the next, i mean, really babe), although let me say this to all the hillary haters out there-- please don't tell me you don't like her because you think she's too political, because that's about 8 shades of stupid. she's a politician. she's supposed to look for compromise on issues, find a middle ground, see policy from all sides. that's like people who resent doctors for being know-it-alls; if you want someone ill-informed in charge of your health, go for it, but me, i'll go for the one who knows it all, thank you very much. i voted in nh for the lady who did right by the state of new york, who's never been found guilty in any of those bullshitty cattle futures/whitewater/whatever investigations, and who can truly get shit done. and if it comes to it, i'll vote for the skinny rookie dude who talks like a preacher, but when it takes him 2 years to get anything done and we've lost the house and the senate, expect an i told you so. but not you keith, because you'll already know. you're just that smart. i bet you could murder chris matthews and not get caught, sayin.]

long story short, happy valentine's day keith. we spent it as we do most evenings; sharing our shitty dinner, discussing the primaries, disliking le rove. i hope i make your best persons list, because when i'm with you, i'm truly closer to fine.

mini review round-up: michael clayton / kate nash "made of bricks" / blackberry 8830(?)

no images until further notice. my connection is slow, and my will is weak.

*michael clayton
in an effort to write something spoiler-free, i'll just say this; this movie hinges a great deal on a character who's bipolar, and i always have mixed feelings about movies that "use" mental illness because they tend to get it pretty wrong. the worst offenders are those movies with women characters who are total borderlines but we're supposed to believe they're actually just free spirits misunderstood by everyone but the one solid man who can save their broken, wayward she-souls (see: eternal sunshine of the meow meow meow, most of the mid-career movies of drew barrymore or angelina jolie, etc).

it's like when your dude friends tell you, "oh, i met this girl at a bar, she's totally fun and crazy, she danced on a stool like a ballerina and tried to eat a foosball with her eye and then blew me next to a deli atm while making a withdrawal at the same time and i think i'm in love," and you say, "sounds like she's actually crazy and probably dangerous," and dude calls you a boring old person until a week later when said girl has sent him to the hospital for stitches because he was looking the counter girl at pita grill in the eye and he's wondering why all women are so nuts when it's really just the women he likes who happen to actually be nuts.

long story short, writers often use crazy as a cheat that they can bend to do whatever the story demands, having a character do wacky things under the umbrella of bipolar disorder that are actually completely uncharacteristic of the disease. (or, to be slightly more cohesive to the thoughts above, to write off crazy altogether as just being "free spirited," because mental illness is just this mystery made up disease and it's time to quit stalling as you make your journey across the bridge away from xenu etc). so this character has a change of heart as he stops taking his meds, and maybe it's realistic, although it's more likely to me that a manic person'd try to fuck everyone in sight, write the great american novel, and eat the world's best pie instead of find his moral center, but whatever.

so for everyone else who doesn't share my pet peeve, enjoys 70's-y cop/justice movies, and wants to fuck george clooney or loves someone who does, then sure, see this movie. for those who are also wary of crazy on film, "michael clayton" won't really offend. and it won't make you not want to fuck george clooney.

*kate nash "made of bricks"
what is it with me and british music lately? i think it has to do with the fact that this past year has been all about driving and running (more like jogging, or really the "anchorman"-ian yogging, but whatever), two things i never did in nyc, and two things that require a very specific soundtrack. i can take the train listening to "black sheep boy," but can i push my fat ass up a mountain to it? not so much. i can barely stay awake in traffic to the album's second half. but i've listened to "our earthly pleasures" on the trail so many times i could time it to specific curves. and i don't care if kate nash is supposed to be lily allen lite, her record is a lot more fun and i think it's solely responsible for taking my speed from "embarrassing" to "arthritic."

emma's friend barbara hates this record because she thinks kate nash's lyrics are like director's commentary on her boring cute life, like, "i woke up this morning and ate an apple and took the subway and buildings are tall and i like boys la la la." and while those are not real lyrics, "and she was wearing a skirt and he thought she looked nice and yeah she didn't really care about anything else cuz she only wanted him to think that she looked nice and he did," are. but it all redeems itself with the chorus (and this is the same song, "birds"), when the he explains his feelings to the she, both of them being, from i can tell, the world's most adorable chavs; "yeah birds can fly so high and they can shit on your head, yeah they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared, but when you look at them, and you see that they're beautiful, that's how i feel about you." some would puke. moi, even though this is a lower tempo number, i make with the moving of ass.

the more uptempo songs are obviously better movement material, but fun's fun, and fun's a motivator, and that i don't get from all that low tempo integrity shit that's domestically made. so viva kate nash and her stream of consciousness fake-cockney musings. here's to making the transition together from "arthritic" to "possible palsy."

*blackberry whatever
i got a fancypants phone/ass computer (that's the pocket it lives in, i'm not being dirty) because my contract made it cheap to get, and i only bring it up here because i wonder-- does anybody with a phone like this get a genuine ampersand? does anyone else care about the lack of ampersand? 'cause i think i care. the iphone probably has one since it has everything else but verizon it seems, and since no other carrier works in my state of residence (except us cellular, which only works in the woods, essentially) (which is why you've never heard of it), i'm stuck. and i'm forced to use a plus sign, which is ironic, given how negative i've been feeling lately. or really just unmotivated to do anything but sleep + yog. crazy!

pt. 2: nh, ma, the magic castle

ok! if i wait until have the will to find/post pictures, i'll never get this up. so here it is unillustrated. pix tk if i ever truly emerge from the haze of cold medication i pumped myself up with last week.

nh:
it's not just that it's been so long since being in nh that i don't remember what happened, but that, since that time, i have taken such a rainbow of 'quils, boy day- and ny-, that all my immediate memories that occured before my illness are lost in an orange/aqua haze. so i was sick, and LA was wet, and NH is a fog.

i do recall new years at rebecca's house, which has been going on for i don't know how many years. me and my oldest ladyfriends and their manfriends (formerly manfriends du jour, but now, as we age, manfriends por vida) plus other friends get together, i show up at the last minute as not to offend my family and our friends back at our house an hour away, everybody else cooks for hours before i get there, we eat ourselves sick, most everyone gets drunk.

we play celebrity (like taboo, but with the names of famous people from pop culture, fiction, etc, plus a 2nd round where you have to guess the celeb after one word as a clue, and a 3rd round that's just charades). i submit an inappropriate name (see: the big pussy incident of '04-- sorry, rebecca's mom who doesn't watch television and probably still thinks i'm a perv! this year's inappropriate entry was dick sweat, former nh politician and most famous political sign maker ever, but at least she knew who he was and he made for a convenient one word clue with "crotch!").

then we all have to find places to sleep, and rebecca gets mad at me for lobbying for a soft surface since i am physically unable to sleep on floors (let's not mince words-- 15 years of lugging boobs around has turned my spine to a mangled strip of driftwood inhabited by rabid gremlins that are only subdued when fed massive doses of aleve). meanwhile, all the couples are given master suites (not really) while us single peasants unroll our bamboo mats and sleep in the hay and dirt (not at all).

this year i smartly circumvented rebecca and found a mat of my very own, although i'd already weaseled a spare shitty sleeping pad from a nice young lad i won't name because, being that he was the only single dude there who wasn't into dudes himself, and being that i live clan of the cave bear-style minus the clan or even the bear, i feel shame for myself and pity for him at my level of flirtation.

i can't tell whether i'm being reasonable, ie, chastizing myself for being a putz and being a flirtron with some guy who i won't see any sooner than the eve of 2009 (and he smokes! ick!), or if my months of solitude have made me a combination of dudephobic and completely lacking in self-esteem, ie, that i'm less ashamed at the ludicrousness of the situation but of the fact that i'm some sort of camryn manhiem/mel gibson in the man without a face combo beast who should never leave my clock tower because the peasants will chase me with torches and the sight of me will cause not repulsive people to become sterile. and that this poor, cute dude will remember new years 2008 as the night he spent many confusing moments forced to joke around with somebody who looked just like daniel day lewis in there will be blood right down to the mustache and a-1 authentic ye olde facial shine, but then, also, had tits.

i guess the self-esteem thing is the real issue. anywho.

and then i had to wake up elanor (who wasn't actually sleeping, faker) so she could help me arrange the mats so that there was enough room between my mat and dude's mat (he was still downstairs, probably trying to drink the image of my shiny mustachioed face out of his corneas) so that it didn't seem like i was going to stick my straw into his milkshake while he slept, even though there wasn't a lot of space left in the room and we needed to leave space for julia and her man to get by (so they could get to the futon in the back where their precious pair of backs could find cushed comfort). and it worked out, but i guess the point is, happy new year, there was a snow storm, i'm going to die so alone that my reflection will be long gone. but without all the vampiric perks, trust me.

oh, and i voted in the nh primary, woo, and went back to MA for another snow storm, and then to NYC for a day of non-pariah status, and then back to LA.

la:
so aside from rain and illness, two things of notes have come to pass here since i've returned.

1, emma's cat perry has always had a problem with his narrow urethra, getting blocked up with crystals and causing him pain and constipeetion and what not, so last week the vet decided to widen said urethra by removing the constricting cat penis that housed it. so now he has...well, it's not exactly a vagina, because it's not like he's taking hormones or is an arquette or anything. i said it was like an innie penis, or maybe a ur-gina, or a va-rethra, but these suggestions struck emma as mean. my father said the cat should be renamed varethra franklin, and thus deserving of a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

and if i were doing images here, there'd be one of a lol cat saying "CAN I HAZ VAGINA?"

and the thing is, i hate cats, so hate cats, but if buzz needed to have his ween removed, i wouldn't just pay for a new vagina, i'd probably give him my own i love him that much (and hey, it's not doing me that much good). and those who know buzz know just how much he loves not just his own penis and the act of keeping it sparkling clean, but the joy he takes in other dogs' penises and keeping their hygiene up to snuff. my heart breaks just thinking about it.

anyway, perry's recovering in cat hospital. or at least most of him is.

2, i went to the magic castle! if you've ever seen arrested development and know of gob bluth's feud with the magician's union, then know that the union is kind of a joke (i hope, at least) but their hq is not-- the magic castle is an actual LA-style castle with stained glass windows of owls and shit on franklin that is open to members only. and tada, my friend lizzy's brother-in-law's bff is a real life magician and a card carrying magic castle member. cue: the final countdown. we were in!

and even if i were doing pictures, i'd have no pictures because there is no photography in the magic castle. there's only expensive food (magic castle (tm) garlic bread!), posters of sigfried and roy, and THE ANCIENT ART OF ILLUSION. after finishing my enchanted chicken breast i went with my party to see a total of 4 magicians who magicified with rope, cards, random audience jewelery, random giant silver balls, doves, novelty trays, more quarters than a laundromat, and scarves, scarves, scarves. it was everything i love-- chicken breast, genuine/non-ironic camp, and jazz hands. please bury me there under the haunted piano so that i can co-haunt it and make it play "the final countdown" all day and night.

oh! also, i saw in bruges, which was inbrilliant, even tho colin farrell showed up afterwards for a q&a wearing a vest over a t-shirt, jeans with the most ornate asspockets ever, long hair, and a black and white yassar arafat scarf around his stubbly neck. gay terrorist chic doesn't suit him, i assure you.

otherwise it's going to rain tomorrow and i will try to make myself care about the patriots. or look for pixtures. or for my lost self-esteem.

Pt. 1 : england (in a nutshell)

[image: dee's back patio. her back yard is more like a pasture, if you want to get technical.]

LONDON:
credit card miles gave me a free ticket, and emma and her birthday gave me a free place to stay and an excuse to go, so why the hell not spent christmas in ye olde accentshire? staying with emma's family is great, not just because her dad looks like the dad on the fresh prince if he were white and her mom is always making delicious soup while listening to cds of the 2000 year old man, or because emma takes me to places like london's oldest tea shop and insists we spend christmas day watching kylie minogue on the dr. who special, but because emma hasn't lived in the house since she was 16 or so, so everything she owns there is like a shrine to the early/mid-90s, which is exactly when i really gave a shit about english pop culture. so when i go to england, i don't just travel to europe, i travel back in time to a magical place where wonderwall is still on the charts and richie manic is alive and accounted for and the next stone roses album still has the potential to be genius (if it would ever come out, i mean jeez!).

[image: this painting hangs in the upstairs dining area of the oldest tea shop in london. in the basement, there's a shop that sells tons of APC clothing. the shop itself sells an almond pastry that made time stand still. that is all.]

to me, london is exactly like boston (or vice versa really, but you know what i mean), except everybody's really funny instead of really angry. that and it's a lot more expensive (so much more expensive, sweet christ!). and everybody hates the irish instead of everybody being irish. but the tube and the t both run their last trains way too early (altho, unlike the t, the underground map does not resemble a swastika). and everything is old. deliciously, beautifully old.

between family visits (i'll get to that later) and academic stuff, i've been to london a bunch of times, so i've done all the touristy shit before, plus i timed my visit right around the time the entire country shuts down for jesus. so i did see a play (the patrick marber dealie about poker, and let me say that for a guy who was so funny on the day today, marber as dramatiste seems to be a humorless, self-important dick, because some of the dialog is so overwrought it's almost like you can picture it being written by a guy in a beret [although it was nowhere near as bad as closer, thanks god, in that it was at least about something besides the offscreen presense of natalie portman's nekt cooch]). mostly tho, i shopped, ate, spent time with emma's family, and, as previously mentioned, watched dr. who.

i've been trying to avoid another scifi obsession and skipping dr. who and torchwood altogether, and emma's grandma didn't want to watch it, either, because she didn't want to miss dragon's den, but emma wanted to see kylie. and it was kind of shocking how much emma enjoyed the show despite hating scifi, and how much grandma enjoyed the show despite the fact she called it "disgraceful" or "atrocious" every fifteen minutes (before returning to gaze at the screen with slackjawed wonder).

and even shopping i didn't buy too much stuff (so! ex! pen! sive!), but i did get some marks and spencer mini chocolately bites for new years eve (also to be discussed later) and a pair of boots that make me look like robin hood (minus the soap star good looks, alas). oh, and an overpriced train ticket to kings lynn. still waiting for my refund, england. let's hope it takes less time than that stone roses album! blimey!

KINGS LYNN/NORWICH:
as previously mentioned, i have family in england-- cousins on my father's side-- who live in a diary cottage an hour or so outside of norwich. the matriarch of this wing of the family is my cousin dee, who started renting the cottage 40 years ago when, as a young hippie, she needed a cheap place to live and didn't mind the lack of plumbing or the goat that lived inside. then she lived in london for a while, had a family, visited the place on weekends, whatever, but now, as an older hippie, she's in norwich fulltime 3 toilets, central heating, and, with the kids all out of the house, not so much as a dog, so i was glad to keep her company, even if it was only for a couple days.

[image: where i slumbered. sigh.]

[image: the indoor plumbing of which i spake. the bathroom itself might have been installed 10 years ago, but the toilet itself is so old i think jesus might have used it to turn his piss into grog. can't be sure where that is in the new testement though. probably right near the passage that says you can't be gay.]

i've always taken after my father more than my mother (see: nerdiness, tact deficiency, mustache), and my dad and dee were pretty close growing up, so dee feels more like an aunt than a cousin once removed on the side whatever whatever. and it was also a treat to see milo, jamie's (dee's son's) kid who i last saw when he was maybe a week old and had no name. i don't think milo had a name until he was almost a month old because jamie and his wife are both architects, and therefore highly perfectionistic across the board. add to that that his wife is from israel (but really nice, i swear to god!) and was looking for a name her family could pronounce, and that jamie wanted to carry on dee's family tradition and give his son at least 5 names (i think jamie has 7...dee's oldest daughter, mary-jane, has maybe 9, one of which is hurricane). so yeah, milo took a while to come up with. but natch, he's an adorable little guy, and i expect great things, even if his mother's teaching him hebrew.


[images: pre-milo living room, post-milo/childsplosion living room]

on saturday, dee and i had a lovely day around dairy cottages, eating lentil soup, tending the fire and listening to bob dylan dj a show on bbc 2 in which all the songs were about dogs. hippietastic! and i love her house, no matter how fucking cold it gets in the winter, because it's so old and built for people so much smaller that you can't not feel like a hobbit. i should note tho that dee, hippie she is, absolutely schooled my ass in scrabble like a word jock. and granted, i suck at scrabble, suck like that guy meadow soprano dated who, when they played in her dorm room, spelled words like fat and poop, but the beating i got was still sobering.

then on sunday we caved and bought milo a tiny christmas tree to prepare for his arrival (he's old enough to know he's missing out, i guess, even though his household is religion-free), ate a lovely early supper, and then poor dee had to drive me back to the train in the dark fog so i could get back to london before emma's mom got worried on my journey from one surogate jewish mother to another. but at least i got to see dee, and i assured her a good room in the house when she comes to becca's wedding (more on that later-- so much to be discussed later!), and when i got back to emma's, there was cake. and more soup.

LONDON AGAIN:
long story short, emma wanted to see a movie and get high tea on her birthday, so not only did i agree to see enchanted, but i wore heels, so let nobody ever question my love for emma and my appreciation for her birth but not long after that i had to fly back to boston on an american airlines flight that is pretty much the airborne version of steerage/traveling to europe on the back of a pick-up truck, and so i traveled back in time to the oasis-less present day while sitting next to an enormous russianess in a sweat suit. then i got scooped up that the airport and went off to new hampshire in a snow storm, having gotten through security with not one, but two containers of mini chocolately bites.

[image: happy birthday, emsie! and no, that's not a lush or happy mondays or cornershop or whoever LP]

next: new hampshire, new year's, n'high school musical two. which, believe it or not, doesn't make for a long entry. shrugs.

i lost the keys to the kingdom! / mini mini review: atonement

[image: in london over xmas, emma figured out her new years resolution early.]

seriously! due a series of technically problem/general lack of mental prowess, i was e-silenced from my own personal one-stop internet source of self amusement! unable to write and read my own witticisms, i had to recite them to myself while alone in the car, but let me tell you, i lose a lot off the page!

anyway, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so i will do my best then to sum up the last month while sitting in this office and listening to the ice dams break. for now, just know that i got to vote today and you didn't, it's not too late to wish emma a happy birthday, and what my opinion is of atonement.

*atonement
i didn't really want to see this movie, but pickins was slim; we never seem to go to concord, which means the closest movie theaters are the west lebanon 6, aka the west leb anonymous, so nicknamed for the fact that the steps leading up to the projection booth are labeled with the 12 steps of recovery (bill t or whoever was a cinaste, who knew?), and the nugget, the nonprofit/semi-arty movie theater on main street hanover that we all enjoy going to despite the fact that the audiences are always made up of loud, deaf old people and young, drunk dartmouth people. and really, there is so little to do in hanover that going with your dorm buddies and sneaking a few 40s of mickeys into the 8 o'clock of syrianna seems like a strong plan for a saturday night.

i guess i did want to see this movie because james mcavoy is in it, and i'm comfortable with my cliche white girl crushes at this point, although (SPOILER ALERT NOT REALLY!) i do think it's weird that this short, super-pale, semi-ginger actor, as hot as he is, is the go-to male lead to fucks ladies against walls. or bookcases. or i guess in starter for 10 it's more of an awkard push onto a bed, but still-- in the last king of scotland he gets it on against the wall of a grotto! he's a hairless, 5'6" englishman-- would you pick him out of a line-up as the vertical grotto sex haver? daniel craig, maybe, but james mcavoy? will wonders never cease. or recline.

anyway, the reason i can go off on all this non-plot related shit is because this movie doesn't really have a plot, or more accurately, it doesn't have a middle. there's the shocking EVENT of the first act, and that leads to a result, but the getting to that result is essentially filler. bad for the story, good for those of us who just want an excuse to look at james mcavoy.

also, in the way the movie enchanted depicted the most turned on a woman's ever been by chest hair, atonement (SPOILER ALERT FOR CERTAIN!) shows us that tossing around the word cunt can ruin your entire fucking life. but it can also get you laid while standing up. knowing that (and looking at the picture below), you can probably skip atonement. which means i just saved you the price of a movie ticket, ya lucky cunt.