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.

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!