The Tilt-A-Whirl That Is My Head

What I Learned from Blitzen Trapper

2010-06-08T18:19:00.004-04:00

First off, that I miss ALBUMS. You know, those things that you used to rush to the record store to buy all big and flat and shiny and smelling of shrink-wrapped awesomeness? And you'd drop the needle down on track one, side one, and it would be like a microcosm of the rest of the universe you were about to be opened to ... one beautiful thing leading into another, interrupted maybe occasionally by something not so great, but not worth getting up off the sofa to move the needle to the next track enough times that it eventually grew on you.

So I'd heard of this band with the quirky name. (Folk rock. Eh.) And I gave them a shot when NPR posted their newest thing live online (which treat, unfortunately ends today when the album is released tomorrow). Then from the moment that it started streaming into my head, I was in smooth in love.

They are truly their own beast; but I have to say that if you have ever been head over heels with a Beatles ballad or an ELO or Wings anthem or a Tom Petty ode, or a Gram Parsons ditty, this heaven-to-hell-and-all-points-in-between Destroyer Of The Void might be the soundtrack to your coming summer, too.

It is already mine: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127035190

Beset by Demons

2010-01-18T09:38:00.002-05:00

I got hit by a nasty little piece of malware yesterday and spent most of last night trying to get rid of it and am back at it this morning; and am pretty sure that Reverend King's dream didn't include some white chick celebrating his birth by spending all day trying desperately to find a fix for some rogue app that kills you with pop-ups and randomly installs shortcuts to porn.

But hey, the next time you want to have a Nerd Nervous Breakdown, Spyware Doctor with Anti Virus is there to help because every time it finds a problem, it will make that same alarm sound that the spaceships make before an airlock jams and everybody, including that one lead character that you were so sure would make it back home for the heartwarming reunion, dies a horrible death. Because loud grating alarm sounds are exactly what you need while your computer is raining pop-ups, oh and did I forget occasionally launching audio that extols the virtues of the new Neon or NBC's Friday night lineup? And also inviting you to surf porn.

As you were.

Meanwhile, Rick James

2010-01-07T12:19:00.007-05:00

There’s not really much I can do to explain the many months of nonprolificness going on around here except to say for the umpteenth time that there really has been a lot of work going on and I’ve been sort of powerless to find the “free” time to do this thing I (used to) do. The worst result of not writing purely for fun is that I’ve gotten out of the habit; and if you know me in any sense, you know that’s sort of like saying I’ve lost a valuable involuntary reflex like that my lids no longer close when I sneeze to stop my eyeballs from prolapsing out of my skull.

So here’s the deal. There’s still a lot of work going on, but I’ve decided to make the time to write anyway. Now, it might be at the expense of other annoyingly time-consuming stuff including but by no means limited to showering regularly or actually chewing my food or whatever; but indigestion is a small price to pay for reclaiming my personal self-expression. And it’s not like you can smell me over the Internet. Yet.

So let’s get down to the biznitch: Hi, I’m Mo. Yeah, we met a while back and I don’t expect you to remember … just bear with and it’ll come back to you. Possibly in disturbing waves.

Buckle Up.

So the most major thing that that has happened around here lately is that my son, who was only the day before yesterday drooling into a bib and stuffing Cheerios cheerfully up his nose, is now this tall, long-haired, fashionable, and mostly nice-smelling male person in fedora hats and Levi’s flares with a very deep voice and intelligent gray-eyed gaze, all of which artfully combine to make grown women in Target who should absolutely know better fluff their hair and turn around to get another look.

But then when you’re fairly convinced that you’re conversing with an actual and apparent grown-up about things like the emerging ecosciences and the turning tide against epidemic consumerist greed; he very seriously adds that it’s about time somebody invents a machine that harnesses the power of farts and is it 8:00 yet because there’s a new Ben 10.

And while I’m ready for the ManBoy stage, I’m not ready for him to be rushed through it by grown-looking outsides that are already rampantly writing checks that his 13-year-old insides aren’t equipped to cash as he becomes increasingly appealing to a certain demographic that includes a disproportionate number of teachers in Florida, and this parenting business that I’ve been repeatedly certain could get none more odd has just taken on a whole new dimension of what the holy hell?

So that's me today. You?

Parenting Short Cuts

2009-07-21T21:23:00.003-04:00

Tip #7: Never underestimate the suggestive power of sheer genetics.

Me: "Now that my stuff is out of the way, I'll make it up to you by doing something that's fun only for you."
Sam: "Let's go get Slurpees and crank some Tesla to eleven on the way."
Me: "Well, if that's your idea of a good time, I guess I'll just deal."

Next Stop, Union Station - DC

2009-06-05T14:46:00.000-04:00

GIRL TRIP!!!

2009-06-04T16:25:00.001-04:00

Orchids

2009-06-01T15:21:00.004-04:00

Today started with coffee and art books and progressed to sketching, and then the happy realization that our new, friendly neighborhood fabric store (while there for "bum roll" supplies, but more on that later) also carries canvasses.

Perhaps a few too many of those art books were about Van Gogh.

V-1

2009-05-28T09:27:00.001-04:00

The dream about being chased by two Rastafarians in an orange Gremlin and the cartoon spider that turned into a real one.

V-2

2009-05-27T13:30:00.001-04:00

We rediscover that Nick Drake is *almost* as good as Xanax.

Giant Cheesy Balls

2009-04-03T14:36:00.003-04:00

No, this is not going to be a post about the IRS, though I know the subject line may have confused you on that point.

Thing is, I know you guys rely on me for the more importantly retarded bits of information that you need to stay alive; and on that count, I am sorry that I have not recently been there for you. I hope that this will, in some small measure, make up for that. Besides being sort of like somebody made a YouTube video of my actual Sense of Humor, the following product endorsement showcases a new item about which I am very excited. And by very excited, I mean MARRY ME, FRITO-LAY.

If that does not make your Friday Happy, I do not know what could.

Eye-Con

2009-03-10T17:42:00.001-04:00

Things That I Have Been Doing

2009-02-19T05:49:00.005-05:00

Mostly, I have been working; but we’ve been over that already. In the few precious hours of free time that I have had and in case you care ... and apparently you do, because you are here ... I have been up to the following, on and off and in no particular order:

1. Reading Killing Yourself to Live which is a brilliant book not strictly about dead rock stars and how they died by Chuck Klosterman that you should probably read yesterday already, if not sooner. Unless you are LouLou, in which case you should under no circumstances so much as even think about it. Ever. At all.

2. Listening to Changing of the Guard which is a Bob Dylan song covered on an album named Dislocation Blues by Chris Whitley and Jeff Lang that is really very good as a whole if you like blues guitar, which ya’ll know I do; but in any case, this version of this song in particular — and you might understand why if you hear it — is very difficult to not listen to until you just can't listen anymore. (And if you're a Dylan fan, you might like to know that there's a fucking awesome version of When I Paint My Masterpiece on this same album; and if you're not necessarily a Dylan fan ... the way these guys interpret him... well, it might actually make you one.)

As you were.

Parenting Short Cuts

2009-02-10T12:33:00.003-05:00

Tip #6: Discussing affinities can help guide your child toward a rewarding career.

Sam: "Well, I like the idea of designing body parts. You know, like modeling and molding the pieces in plastic or whatever and making them look realistic."
Me: "So you think you might like to become a prosthetician?"
Sam: "No. I want to be in GWAR."

Welcome to My Own Intervention

2009-02-06T09:53:00.002-05:00

I’ve been wrapped up in work for, I guess, the same reason a lot of people are right now. Don’t get me wrong. I have, for nearly fifteen years, been incredibly lucky to have this job … I mean, seriously. I do it at home in an office with windows overlooking my front yard and often in the yoga pants I slept in and am here to get The Boy off to school in the morning and pick him up at the bus stop at the end of the day so he doesn’t have to carry the five-hundred-pound saxophone all the way up the hill and can spend my coffee breaks catching up on housework that won’t need to get done when the weekend comes while my mother sips coffee and watches news in the next room and my special brother makes art at my dining room table. I lead a truly charmed life. And it’s more charmed than ever right now thanks to the fact that I still have this charming job in an economy where an awful lot of people don’t have even the jobs they used to have to sit in traffic to get to then spend all day in a cubicle between the girl who cracks her gum and that guy whose lunch always smells like sauerkraut.

I say all that so that when I say what I’m about to say you’ll know that it’s not a complaint but rather simply a resigned observation after weeks of having to somewhat reinvent the job so that our crazy little company can weather whatever storms are yet to come and having had my Nerd Prowess, (in)ability to stay focused, and near-entire stock of waking hours pushed to the absolute outer limits of limitdom: I am tired as all motherfucking hell.

But tonight is girls’ night out at Bonefish Grill, and I intend to have a couple of big glasses of white wine and enjoy breathing air that I maybe haven’t already breathed several times already just today, and in a chair other than this one in which I have sat for so long that it and my ass have achieved some kind of bastardized Vulcan Mind Meld.

This being Friday, ya’ll can rock it a little along with me to a groove appropriate to the sort of rut to which I’ve fallen in but in which I do not intend for much longer today, to stay.

With Friday, You Get Link

2009-01-23T08:15:00.003-05:00

I didn't count on being back so soon, but then I found this and believe me when I say to you that your Friday would not be complete without it.

Heavy Metal Band Names

And of course, you know THAT wouldn't be complete without THIS...

It is, in fact, Friday. Let us rock it as such.

Twittering Widgets, Batman!

2009-01-22T16:09:00.002-05:00

Oy. Really, that about sums it up.

You know, I wouldn't have thought it possible to get so geeked out on work-related internet pursuits that I'd lose my taste for sharing my innermost thoughts here with the entire Internet including people that I don't even know; but turns out? Yeah, totally possible.

So forgive me if I'm not all up on the posting lately. I'll be back. Just as soon as the last widget is officially twittering.

That rug really tied the room together.

2008-12-31T09:51:00.008-05:00

How were my Holidays? Let me just start by saying that I now own my own bowling shoes and that they were only not exactly the strangest Christmas present I’ve ever received because last year I got a Pagan Altar. Okay, technically not pagan, but definitely not Judeo-Christian, and complete with offerings of exotic fruit. So the bowling shoes? They had a tough act to follow, but with the pink skull-laces I got for my birthday and have been saving for exactly the right pair of shoes combined with the fact that they represent not having to put my feet anywhere that hundreds if not thousands of other feet have been? That is what is meant when it is said that something rocks. So, yeah. I went bowling and am kind of a bowler now, which on the slippery slope of a fine Southern Town like Richmond means that I’m pretty much "fixin' to tailgate at NASCAR."

And what are The Holidays without improvised party games? Enter Exhibit A, a small sticky-note list currently occupying the star position in the cover of my planner book and that contains the names, in the very distinctive handwriting of our dearest LouLou, of Hannibal; Jack Elam; Lord Nelson; Sammy Davis, Jr.; Lee Majors; Peter Falk; Moshe Dyan; James Thurber; and Sandy Duncan. Yeah, I know that last one totally gave it away: Top Ten People With Only One Eye. We originally mistook Moshe Dyan for Menachem Begin which led to a terribly bastardized version of Hava Nagila about the two of them coming into surprise contact with each other and the one spotting the other through his one remaining eye. And that might sound weird on the surface, but I got Hanukkah gelt in my Christmas stocking so really, that was just the sort of thing that was bound to result. And yes, I realize that’s only nine names. When we found out that Ry Cooder technically still has the other eye, he couldn’t possibly make the cut.

This evening is Whisky Sour night at Chez LouLou featuring Lasagna, rumoredly to be served over Big Bang Theory; and not that my best friends are in any way predictable and certainly not in a bad way, but I can already treat you to at least one prescient sliver of tonight’s perfectly sparkling conversation, which is entirely guaranteed to go something like this:

One of Us: "Everybody should start the New Year off with a Big Bang.”
The Rest of Us: “Hehehehe. He/She said Bang.”

Not Your Sister's Sub Pop

2008-12-22T20:14:00.004-05:00

Somewhere in the middle of a conversation with my brother last month, he asked if I'd heard this one band yet called Fleet Foxes, because I needed to. I hadn't. So I picked up a copy of their self-titled album before even leaving Nashville. The one with the fabulous Not-Bosch-But-Bruegel on the front (check out the thumbnail cover over in the sidebar). And I listened once and liked it, well, mmmmmmokay. Listened twice and began to love it completely. Listened three times and got hooked particularly on the slinky backwoods jangle of "Blueridge Mountains, over near Tennessee..."

It's lovely. You might agree.

Warm December

2008-12-19T08:05:00.003-05:00

In case you're wondering what my world looks like today, this is a slice of the view from outside my kitchen window, where I sit at the table most days lately and perform my so-called job. Today the air is heavy with rain and fog; and while much of the country will find itself slammed in the face with ice and snow or at least preparing to be, here it will be an unseasonable sixty. And my mother will say something like "say what you will about that Global Warming, but it sure is nice to walk Thelonious without a parka." And really, with that, I cannot truly disagree.

So Close, No Matter How Far

2008-12-18T07:40:00.003-05:00

Hearken, my friends. The time is nigh. That distant, growling thunder?

Guitar Hero ... METALLICA.

Heat Misers

2008-12-16T10:07:00.003-05:00

Resolutions

2008-12-11T09:35:00.004-05:00

Now listen, I’m not one to get all serious about the New Year’s resolutions or whatever, but I do enjoy the whole ripe, tabula rasa-ness of a calendar’s impending turn, full of new possibilities and potential opportunities for reinvention and discovery and stuff like that there. The thing is that I’m one of those people who always has a lot of “I should do that some day” propositions floating around in her head, and maybe that’s what makes every New Year so attractive. In the same vein, I am also one of those people for whom everything that I should eventually get around to is fraught with *fear(s).

*And I could put an adjective in front of that if I wanted to, but you know, paranoia can be so subjective.

But really, you know from personal experience if this is regular reading for you, that those fears do not extend to jinxing things by saying them out loud or even to the entire Internet including people that I don’t even know. So in lieu of an entry that anybody might find of actual interest, let me go ahead and share with you a little list I like to call Some of the Stuff That I Should Do Some Day Starting Maybe Next Year, and which goes something like this:

1. Seriously consider online dating. This will require that I get over an acute suspicion that The Internet cannot possibly adjudge the admittedly few but crucially fine differences between The Man of My Dreams and one who speaks fluent Elvish, lives in his mother’s attic, calls his action figure collection “My Precioussssss”, drives a Ranchero, and collects anime porn.

2. Write a book. This will require that I get over my fear of the words “write what you know” and finally compose that work of obvious fiction about an early-middle-aged woman who very obviously still listens to Peter Murphy, owns way too many accessories with skulls on them, is the single mother of a remarkably well-adjusted pre-teen son who regularly refers to her as “Spaz-tastic”, and cohabitates with her mother the reformed religious nut and her mentally handicapped brother who is easily about five chapters all by himself including ones on Friday Night Smackdown and free-association conversations that all end up about dessert. Oh, and she’s bizarrely worried that online dating could make her life weirder than it already is.

3. Regularly create more art. Yeah, I know that I write, and some people would loosely call this a creative endeavor, but I do also occasionally create tangible things that people have been known to act as though they enjoy. I’d like to do more of that, in spite of my fear that I might just be cluttering the world with more crap.

So those are just three contenders for this year’s Resolutionary list. There are probably more, but really, it’d be a huge thing if any one of those actually came to anything approaching fruition. So really, at the top of my list should be Pick One, the doing it part being somewhat inferred.

You?

Awesome M.

2008-12-09T19:18:00.003-05:00

I have The Block. You know, the one that happens to people who want to write, but can't. So instead, I will treat you to a photo that my brother recently shared with me, and that has easily been my very favorite visual of the entire week if not month or year.

This is my nephew, Michael, exhibiting some mighty fine fashion sense.

Yep, I know you're thinking this is pretty stinkin' funny.

And you don't even know what I know.

Because under the hat?

Yeah, Hotwheels.

Catzilla

2008-12-04T09:30:00.003-05:00

Once, several years ago, I nearly went inexplicably blind; and whereas at the time it seemed like rather a serious thing, it now sounds sounds more like the opening of a really funny story wherein I am not good for much other than painting little plaster Christmas Houses in the middle of one summer at very very close range and then years later become one of those people who blogs about her cat.

Internet, meet Ella Fitzgerald, variously known as Minnie and "You! Off the table! Now!"

Anyway, in addition to a cat named after a jazz icon, I now possess a rather extensive little village including a church, music store, firehouse, bakery, auto parts store, sweet shop, one residence, and a hamburger stand shaped like a hamburger. Every year, we take the little buildings out of bubble wrap and arrange them under our tree.

We call it a holiday tradition.

Ms. Fitzgerald calls it Taking Over The World.

Then There Were Three

2008-12-03T17:10:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving

2008-12-02T06:43:00.012-05:00

This year, Thanksgiving was with the Nashville Contingent, so I can take no credit for that lovely table except that it was partially my idea to move it from the kitchen to the living room. I have to show you the same table from another angle so that you can feast your eyes upon the magnificent portrait on the far wall of Charles Bukowski. Because every Thanksgiving needs one.

I wish that I could wrap up my several days in Nashville all in a bow and lay it, all smelling of cinnamon and cloves, right at your feet; but my family being what it is … not so much a family per se as a Tennessee Williams cast, that’s not going to be an easy thing to do. But I wish that you had as wonderful a Thanksgiving as I did, in which your mother and sister-in-law engaged in the Great Stuffing Smackdown of 2008 which was officially declared a tie and your five-year-old nephew sang Crazy Train and your brother walked around the house plucking blues on a vintage Danelectro and your other brother ate a drumstick clean down to the bone and your son lazed in the rare November sun in a backyard hammock and your sister-in-law's mother made the best 22-pound turkey ever and there were carols on a baby grand and a new puppy, or whatever the equivalents to all those things may be for you. And in case you’re wondering what some of all that sounds like, imagine brushes on a snare drum and two children noodling on a piano and the crush and rustle of tin foil and ...

Her: “Ray Charles is over so what do we want over dinner? Classical or blues?”
Him: “Classical.”
Her: “Chopin, Mozart, or Debussy? I can’t decide.”
Him: (singing) “You say DeBUssy, I say DEBussy, you say Mote-zart, I say Mozart; DeBUsy, DEBusy, Mozart, Mote-zart, let’s Carl the whole thing Orff. Hehehe, get it? Carl Orff?!?”

Christmas... counting the days.

A Splendid Table

2008-12-01T11:53:00.005-05:00

More on the excellent Thanksgiving feast that occurred at this table will be posted later, but I am home to a house infested with jade glass buddhas. Oh, and one gnome.

Home

2008-11-24T09:36:00.000-05:00

No Longer Allowed

2008-11-22T13:21:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I was cranky by the time noon hit yesterday and the show was officially over. My feet didn't hurt so much as they just needed to be removed from my body; my skin felt and looked like leather after a week in the desert; and I had a snot. Make that Snot, with a capital in the front.

But then, after packing out, I went for a massage and not just any old massage but one in which hot stones soaked in oil were placed on my aching body and some of them were made of jade and felt like lumps of hot silk. And then I spent a few minutes in the steam room. And then, feeling mostly boneless, I stopped at one of the cooler shops to pick up a necklace I've had my eyes on all week, and the change for purchasing that necklace was exactly seven dollars and seven cents. And I don't know what that says to you, but to me it said "put me in a slot machine immediately." And so I found a promising looking slot machine, and I swear to you they were even playing one of my faovrite Steely Dan songs over the loudspeaker when I stuffed in that seven dollars and on the second push of a button, my seven dollars turned immediately into three hundred and seventy eight. And it was while taking the little strip of paper that vouched for my multiplied money toward a cashout machine that the Chippendale dancer invited me to stop what I was doing and place both of my hands on his ass, and I don't know about you, but that's not the sort of invitation that I can easily just pass up when I've just had a massage and bought a cool necklace and won a bunch of money.

And that is why no matter what a tough, hard-assed, dehydrating, snot-inducing week it may have been, as I sit now and avail myself of McCarran International's free wireless to let you know that I am now on my way home, I am officially no longer allowed to complain.

Vegas, Baby.

2008-11-16T22:04:00.004-05:00

Are you missing me? Humor me and tell me that you are.

It is 10:04 at home, which means it is 7:04 here, only it feels like it is 10:04. I am in Vegas producing one of the annual conferences that I produce for the so-called job. One of the quirky things that I often get to do in Vegas is to take limosines to totally run-of-the-mill places. Like Best Buy. Which is one of the things that I did today.

Another of the quirky things that I often get to do in Vegas is to miss some of the friends that I don't even see when I'm at home. I think that my overworked little brain likes to believe that if I have to take it to a non-home place, it ought to be to spend time with the people I don't get to spend time with at home. And I DO get to spend time with people who are important to me here that I don't get to see otherwise, because my wacky little Work Family is the awesomest... but I also came within a hair's breadth of getting to see DK-T for a weekend which sadly was not to be. And, my Rat, who has at least a couple of times been in Vegas on the same week that I typically am, is apparently not this time. And my LouLou is back home doing back home things.

The week has only just begun, and it has been all glitchy so far, so I am optimistic that it really can only get better from here.

And I am sure that it will.

No Regrets

2008-11-05T10:12:00.006-05:00

I’m not all that outspoken about my political leanings. Maybe it’s that my deeply southern upbringing taught me that it’s rarely good to talk about sex or politics in company; or perhaps it’s just the defense mechanism one develops as the only Republican in the mosh pit. But in my defense, wearing exactly that sort of a uniform for a few years ... a defense one, I mean ... can steer you even farther starboard than your conservative Christian upbringing did and before you even have time to smell the kool aid in the chow hall and wonder what might be in it. And you know, there's a reason they call them the formative years and not the flexibility-instilling ones.

I am a Navy veteran. I am a glasses-wearing post-feminist mom. I know how to handle an assault rifle and I love a good hockey game. I believe in military might and a judiciously-applied death penalty and that abortion is a terrible thing. I have a brother with Down Syndrome.

So, of course, I voted from the heart of all that I am and all that I believe in. And my personal pride in that position is all I need to feel as though my vote really counted.

Well that ... and the fact that the guy I voted for ... won.

Haunt It Like It's Friday

2008-10-30T18:33:00.004-04:00

Me: "I think we're gonna do some trick-or-treating then escape to a movie or something."
Him: (cold glare)
Me: "What?!?"
Him: "I never pegged you for a communist."
Me: (small existentialist meltdown)

There was a time when I lived for Halloween, and it was a time not so very long ago. And I don't know what exactly is trying to happen, but this year, I have had distinct issues with getting into the Halloween spirit, which is really a spirit that I really never had much trouble getting into ever before because it was pretty much my default state of being. I'm preferring not to think that I am in danger somehow of disassociating from my punkrockgothgirl soul and am instead pleading tiredness on the work front contributing to an untimely bit of the old ennui. Whatever.

But then, after taking The Boy for his haircut, we went shopping for the bits and pieces of his costume ... a short-sleeved white button-down and red tie. The cricket bat proved illusive, so I'll be making one out of cardboard tomorrow, along with the nametag. The one that reads Shaun.

And it was at some point while perusing the couple of options in fake blood that it happened ... weighing the differences between gel and the far more realistic stain-style that I realized that Tomorrow, People, Is Halloween.

And rest assured that right about now, I am so there.

Battle of the Hook

2008-10-24T16:18:00.004-04:00

Rock It Like A Revolutionary War

2008-10-17T11:11:00.003-04:00

LouLou, in case you care, is a history nerd. And here let me clarify that I do not mean the kind of person who merely likes movies made out of Bronte novels, but rather the sort who dresses up in several layers of eighteenth century period correct clothing, can explain in great detail to you what the 220-year-old court record meant by describing the offender as a “carted whore”, and would happily spend an entire weekend cooking beans over an open flame.

And I’m sure there are friendships where people can quite easily take a live-and-let-live approach, allowing the significant people in their lives to go about their own business; but we are not the kinds of people who consider the particular degree of friendship that we enjoy to be a spectator sport. This means that at least once before, I have been prevailed upon to participate in the joy that is Revolutionary War reenactment; and as a result, spent an entire weekend in something like 1992-93 hanging out with redcoat-clad loyalists, corseted to within an inch of my life under twenty pounds of linen and stockings that wouldn't stay up over my knees, and smelling not so much like I’d been near the fire as much as in it.

So now, let me tell you to what will certainly be at least a small degree of the incredulity that I, myself, am feeling right about now, that I am doing it all again starting this very afternoon. Why, you ask? Because I am a good and faithful friend. How, you ask? Because more than decade since that first fateful weekend, I am now the veteran mother of a child who loves Chuck E. Cheese, which I have survived, lo this many years, thanks to the fact that Chuck E. offers up air hockey, eighties music, and Budweiser. And in case you’re puzzled by how that has any relationship at all to eighteenth century reenacting, let me point out the glories that are lawn bowling, feeling very much as though you’re in an Adam Ant video, and the historical correctness that is beer. And if you haven’t yet gotten a little drunk in silly clothes and hurled a bocce ball while humming Stand and Deliver, you may not have entirely lived, is all I’m gonna say.

Happy Weekend! And P.S. to DK-T, who was the Will to my Grace long before NBC even ever got a clue … love and hugs and Happy, Happy Birthday to you!

Whatever Will Bewilder Me

2008-10-10T18:42:00.003-04:00

It happened like this: my brother stepped into an elevator last week in a city to which I’ve never been and in which he is only temporarily working. And that elevator had one other person in it. And my brother looked at the nametag that the other guy was wearing and the name on it seemed somehow familiar. So my brother said to the other guy “We haven't met, and I’m not sure how I know this, exactly, but I think you might know my sister.” And that's how my brother introduced himself to one of my very best friends from sixth grade.

Spiral out. Keep going. Spiral out.

Twelve

2008-10-09T09:13:00.001-04:00

Rock It Like It's Friday

2008-10-07T17:47:00.003-04:00

Even if it's not.

A Walk In The Woods

2008-10-06T17:15:00.009-04:00

Bill: "Let's go to Narnia."
Sam: "Cool! We need to find the wardrobe. Look, there it is!"
Bill: "That's a tree."
Sam: "Okay, how about over there?"
Bill: "That's a tree."
Sam: "Yeah, but you wanted to go to Narnia, so let's pretend. Look, there's the wardrobe!"
Bill: "Where?"
Sam: "Over there. By the tree."
Bill: "That's another tree."

First Dance

2008-10-06T17:05:00.002-04:00

Me: “So, did you have a great time at your first school dance?”
Sam: “Yes!”
Me: “And did you actually dance?”
Sam: “Two of my friends came with me out to the dance floor and we jumped up and down for a while without moving our arms.”
Me: “So you’re getting your dance moves off the Internet from old Talking Heads videos.”
Sam: “What?”
Me: “Never mind. Did you jump up and down with any girls?”
Sam: “No, but I hung out for a while with this girl named Abby from my science class.”
Me: “Did they at least play some good music?”
Sam: “Hannah Montana and Soulja Boy or whatever.”
Me: “So, no.”
Sam: “Definitely, not. Mom?”
Me: “Yeah?”
Sam: “I am going to remember this for the rest of my life.”

There Will Be Earplugs

2008-09-27T09:42:00.009-04:00

I have this thing about guys. I like them to sound like... well, guys. I certainly don’t mind it a bit if they smell pretty or buff their nails, and what’s in their underwear drawer, even, is squarely their own business. But I like them to open up their mouths at least and put forth the sounds of unmistakable men. And this is by no means the only or even a terribly important reason why I can’t seem to stand hearing John McCain say more than a few words in sequence. And maybe it’s just me, but I fell asleep on the debate last night and dreamed that Dakota Fanning sure had a lot to say about out-of-control pork barrel spending.

Today, I am going to finish the very large cup of coffee before me and then begin to make the arrangements to equip My Boy with a tenor saxophone. Having not made it onto the drumline for seemingly getting his paradiddles all mixed up with his ratamaques, he is going with his second instrument choice. Tenor saxes, for those of you who don’t have the Band Nerd’s intimate understanding of such things, are the big, unwieldy ones that start off sounding like when the dog hurls in your hallway in the middle of the night until the player progresses to the stage of proficiency that he or she can make the beautifully melodic sound of, well, honking geese. That’s not to say that I don’t love the instrument. And all that is Kenny G. entirely aside, a saxophone, in all of its steampunk-looking glory and well played, is an incredibly gorgeous thing; and My Boy, did after all, only very narrowly escape being named Bird or Parker (seriously enough, people, that there is a picture of Birdman on the wall in my bathroom). But I am remembering distinctly these days the pain of beginning band wherein I subjected my entire household to those shrieks of forced reed and wind that can only be ascribed to a budding clarinetist. Or the shower scene in Psycho.

But a saxophone, at least... well, there's an instrument that can sound like a man.

Somebody get John McCain one.

Now.

Float Like It's Friday

2008-09-19T16:31:00.000-04:00

I Can See Russia From My House

2008-09-18T08:20:00.002-04:00

Matt made me laugh out loud yesterday with this post, so I just thought I'd share the joy.

Sincerely,
Tank Dent Palin

wordl-ing

2008-09-13T22:11:00.005-04:00

Go make your own at http://wordle.net/. Thanks to Ms. Kitteh for indulging my wordlust.

Green Thoughts

2008-09-11T12:37:00.004-04:00

You know how it is when you buy fresh music and do yourself the rare favor of not burning yourself out on it completely the first time around? And then how unbelievably awesome it is to recycle it into heavy rotation ages later and feel like you’re hearing it all for the very first time, only loving it even more than you did when it was new?

I am so there.

A Nap Would Be Nice

2008-09-09T08:39:00.004-04:00

You might be sitting there just peacefully believing that being the mother of a sixth grader is easy. And if you are, come over here for a minute. Seriously, it won’t take long… just long enough for me to beat some sense into you.

Last year, school started at a glorious 9:20 a.m. which is an hour that is just perfectly designed for home-working mothers everywhere to roll out of bed in the morning, throw on some yoga pants, and go about their morning business including seeing their child off at the bus stop with a bigass go-mug of coffee in hand before sitting down at their desks for the day.

This year, school starts at a sadistic 7:25 a.m. which is an hour that is just perfectly designed to mess with my body clock by making me wake up before it is even daylight outside. And allow me to explain to you in case you don’t know this about me already: I hate waking up in the dark. My preferred means, if it has to happen at all, is to be whispered to by a somewhat handsome and deeply-voiced man bearing a mug of coffee; and failing that, I would prefer to sleep until the rising of the actual sun that God himself created and hung there in the sky to let us all know that it’s time to get up. It therefore naturally follows that anyone expecting anybody to be awake in the morning before GOD SAYS SO, including but by no means limited to our neighborhood Middle School, is forwarding the whims of Satan.

I am tired almost all of the time, and I have had it with the tiredness. This revolution? It will not happen with a cry nor with a whimper. It will happen with a great, big, huge fucking yawn.

In case you care, the other thing that happens to the mothers of sixth graders, besides that they yawn a hell of a lot, is that they develop a form of Tourette Syndrome that causes them to spout not only the usual, occasional, spontaneous profanity, but the following three phrases:

1) “Stand up straight!”
2) “Get your hair out of your eyes!”
And my personal favorite…
3) “Stand up straight and get your hair out of your eyes!”

Which leads me to our other newsworthy news, being that my boy has willingly consented to a haircut, the implications of which you have no fucking idea. I believe this to have something to do with the subject of said haircut not having been broached by me, personally, which would only have caused the mere suggestion to be dismissed immediately with much sighing and dramatically downcast glaring and claims of my wantonly overstepping the sacred boundaries of individuality and personal freedom. It happened like this: I took Sam with me to a hair appointment last Friday evening and all in the space of time it took me to go in the back and get shampooed, my stylist and my shaggy-headed son got momentarily thick as thieves looking approvingly at a particular picture in a stylebook, resulting in my son agreeing to come back this Friday for a haircut almost as though it were his own idea. I could have made out with my stylist on the spot, which really had nothing to do with his getting my son to agree to a haircut, but you know that already.

You have been briefed.

As you were.

Let's Play New Olympic Games

2008-08-16T11:06:00.001-04:00

Sam: "Olympic scrabble."

Me: "Olympic lamp rewiring."

Sam: "Olympic marbles."

Me: "Olympic Rochambeau."

Sam: "Olympic butt washing."

Me: "Olympic underwater hopscotch."

Sam: "Olympic monkey poo dodging."

Me: "I’m not sure that’s exciting enough. How about beach Olympic monkey poo dodging."

Sam: "Yeah. With blindfolds."

Rock It Like You Just Got Gnomed

2008-08-01T09:37:00.005-04:00

Okay, it’s not as though I don’t have reason to be suspicious. I have found Buddha in places including but by no means limited to my butter, after all; so I know exactly where this guy came from. And there he was, only this morning, under the tree in my front yard. You really can’t miss him because he is wearing red. His name, apparently, is Happy Gustav. And let's assume that if Happy Gustav could, in fact, rock his Friday, he'd rock it something like this:

Not What You Say It's How You Say It

2008-07-31T11:10:00.006-04:00

It is unconscionable, I know, that you have not heard from me since almost this very time a week ago. Well, maybe to say unconscionable is to flatter myself a little too much; so humor me and consider it at the very least just a bit rude.

LouLou and I joke all the time about how we never hear from our guy friends because they are so damned busy and important. This week, I, myself, have been, while not at all important, busy as can be.

I’ve been doing far too much copywriting here for the so-called job; and I know this because of a weird obsessive/compulsive thing that happens to me whenever I go into copywriting overload, and it is that I begin to mentally edit not just my own written words but also everybody else’s spoken sentences so that they end on a punch-note and not one that left it hanging in the air. And just in case you care, there is an undue amount of dialogue in the new Batman movie that needs exactly that sort of a thing.

If you wanted to, say, seduce me this week; you would do it with a solidly, well-composed sentence that ended with emphasis on the last syllable, like this.

Twist It Like It's Friday

2008-07-25T14:20:00.003-04:00

Yep, phoning it in today, folks. But it's been a long week. This being Friday, ya'll surely know by now exactly what to do.

Work With Me

2008-07-24T13:38:00.005-04:00

First off, don’t tell me all pleasantly that it would be nice if "in the future" I gave you a “heads up” about something so that you could "manage it better on your end" as though I actually did not give you the heads up that I did, in fact, give you. Because I am the Queen of the Heads Up. Just listen to this: “Hey, you! There’s something you need to know about!”

See? That was good, wasn’t it? And just know, in case you're wondering, that sample Heads Up I just gave you was totally uncharacteristically vague. Because in actual practice, I take great pains to impart the Heads Up very specifically. Ya'll know I am nothing if not explicit.

Also — and I don’t know how many times I need to put this warning out to the entire Internet including people that I don’t even know before it is finally understood — but you might think that you want to call and ask for my insight regarding your marketing initiatives using terms like vertically implemented penetration and sample distribution; but just know that before we even got to the part about your hardware tool and the appropriate channel for disseminating it? I had already stopped listening and started doodling cartoon porn.

And, am I the only one who gets almost all her spam lately with subject lines that are bogus big news headlines? Because I’m tired of getting all excited about Michael Jackson’s impending parenting book, and it is unbelievable how many times Amy Winehouse has died in the past week alone. Well, okay, it’s more unbelievable that she has not, in fact, died more than once; but I really want Britney Spears to be pregnant with the antichrist and to find out about it in my email box! People, I can totally handle the five bazillion offers for black market Viagra; but now the spammers are toying with my emotions. And that is just not cool.

But if I started a retro aleatoric funk band, I would totally name it Vertically Implemented Penetration and my first album would be entitled Britney Spears Is Pregnant With the Antichrist featuring the smash hit single Cartoon Porn.

Origins 2.0

2008-07-23T07:00:00.001-04:00

Me: "Okay, this guy has super x-ray vision and he can tell when everybody inside the house is sitting down to eat dinner or if you're on the phone and that's when he sneaks up on your porch and rings the doorbell with a stack of religious magazines. He is ... The Witness!"

Sam: "Now we need Mormons."

Me: "Definitely. Okay, so Mormons aren't allowed to have caffeine."

Sam: "The Decaffeinator! And his boy wonder ..."

Me: "The Brigham Youngster. Oh, and then there's The Mighty Baptismo."

Sam: "Ha! He goes around ruining people's hairstyles by randomly pouring water on their heads by surprise."

Me: "Exactly. And together they are ... The A-Men!"

Let's Play Japanese Monsters

2008-07-22T09:27:00.003-04:00

Me: "Documentamoorea."

Sam: "Reptilladonna. Crapulon."

Me: "Baristagon. Mechagorezilla."

Sam: "Fatelvisora. Wait... Mini Me... I've got it. Vernetroyerdon."

Me: "Whoah, good ones! How about Carebearalante. And, ooooooh nooooooo, it's Chipmunkthra!"

Sam: "How many is that? Nine? We need one more!"

Me: "Britney."

Let's Play Origins

2008-07-21T10:36:00.001-04:00

Sam: “This time, let’s make a villain … a super-villain.”

Me: “No, I think this guy’s problem is that he desperately wants to be a super-villain, but he can only bring himself to break the small rules.”

Sam: “He jaywalks.”

Me: “Exactly. And his cell phone always rings in the movies.”

Sam: “He puts banana peels in with his recycling.”

Me: “He washes his whites with his colors. Oh, and he pees in the pool.”

Sam: “Ooooh. Okay, so what’s his costume?”

Me: “He has a mask and a cape, and he mixes his colors and patterns, like he has a striped shirt and plaid pants and white shoes. After Labor Day.”

Sam: “He is The Infractor!”

Rock It Like Melissa's Got a Gig With the Ergs Tonight

2008-07-18T10:44:00.008-04:00

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a decently recorded Ergs video on the whole entire internet? And, sure, you may be thinking ... "Mo, isn't punk rock supposed to sound a little like crap?" to which I, for once, have absolutely no response. I, anyhow, subscribe to the Porn Theory of punk rock, which is that like sex, it is way better in person. And to that end, if you are anywhere near in or around New Orleans tonight, you should get yourself over to The Big Top and experience you some. Punk rock, I mean. What you do after the show is your business.

But I did find this video served up apparently from Japan, which means that it will probably take fifty bazillion years to load. If you look carefully, I'm sure you can even spot Melissa at that particular show. She would be the girl. If you're looking for her tonight, she'll be the small chick with the Latin tattoos and the grin as big as her guitar.

Stranger Than Spots on a Possum

2008-07-12T07:00:00.007-04:00

Okay, the thing is that there is something happening to me and here I don’t at all mean the crow’s feet or that my boobs are threatening to sneak south (at a pace that they think I wouldn't notice even though I am so totally on to them and they had better cut it the fuck out).

Rather, I mean that my musical tastes have taken something of a turn of late and I’m not sure how I feel that this, of all things, is playing the starring role in my early mid-life crisis. Seriously. I was expecting a foolhardy attraction to much younger men or the burning need for a convertible or a sudden career change to something that advanced literacy in the third world and also allowed me to express my stifled gifts as an artiste. In welding and clay. But really, I am having none of those things, and it's all about the music.

Ask me what kind of music I like, and I’ve always been apt to say “loud”, because really (except for Bruce Springsteen) there’s not a lot of the stuff that I patently don’t enjoy on some level. I’m all for the old blues, bebop, swing, opera, classical, rock … but, vastly, mostly the rock. Put me in the doorway of a mega record emporium and my whole body starts dowsing immediately toward electric guitars and massive drum rigs and three-minute solos and wailing vocals and men in leather pants. You just don’t get a lot of that in the country aisle, so despite being a fully Southern Girl, country has just never really been my all-time favorite cup of tea.

So imagine my surprise when I suddenly started hearing stuff by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris and Townes Van Zandt and Alison Kraus and Graham Parsons and (instead of doing that wrinkly-nasal-nosed thing roughly in keeping with the whine of the slide guitar) liking it.

Lately, I’ve had a killer crush on the musical works of one Ryan Adams (that’s Ryan absolutely without a B in the front) and his band called The Cardinals. And some of it is just as country as chicken-fried okra, but a lot of it has enough of a bluesy rock sensibility to justify my love. Did I say love? Because when I said killer crush back there in the beginning, what I meant was LUV, all in capital letters like that, too. And I know I’ve inflicted it a time or two lately on ya’ll who pay attention to the stuff over in the sidebar, but I’m feeling the need to do it again. Because I’m hooked.

And you know what they say … it’s not an addiction until you find yourself doing it sneakily in secret and alone.

Rock It Like You've Got Tickets to Hellboy II

2008-07-11T11:05:00.002-04:00

Going Green

2008-07-10T10:35:00.002-04:00

My son has been letting his hair grow and it is now rapidly approaching shoulder length and I have not seen both of his eyeballs at the same time in something like a year. It is also, as you may have noticed from the last couple of photos of him, partially and very vibrantly green. The back-story is that while The Nashville Contingent was visiting over Memorial Day week, my son and his beloved Aunt Mel engaged in full-on familial bonding over a box of hair bleach and a bottle of something in a shade called Crimson Storm. So anyway, the red washed out a bit over the subsequent couple of weeks. And it became … well, yeah … pink. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we steered away from the pink with a coat of midnight blue making a lovely range of purples that eventually washed into varying shades of vert, a state of affairs with which he is more than content.

Yes, my son is only a very impressionable eleven and yes, I fully realize that I am sending a loud and clear message that it is okay to buck the status quo.

“Mo,” you may be thinking, “What is going to happen when he tries to live a normal life of his own several years from now with green hair?” And to that I can only reply that I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way or whatever. And the changes this planet desperately needs will not happen all by themselves, people. We have to start somewhere.

And it might as well be with the hair.

Mental Health Day

2008-07-08T17:11:00.001-04:00

In honor of Mental Health Day making it into the New American Standard Dictionary or whatever, I called in for one. Parts of it looked like this:

Light It Like It's Friday

2008-07-04T08:32:00.002-04:00

Happy, Happy 4th, ya'll!

I Know My Craving Heart and I've Seen Your Vicious Eyes

2008-06-30T07:00:00.002-04:00

Ya’ll might know that I have this unhealthy obsession with the questionnaire developed by legendary (?) French television personality, Bernard Pivot, and here I mean the very one that is employed by James Lipton on every episode of Inside The Actor’s Studio, incidentally now featuring a relatively new stage set that is supposed to convey a “gritty, backstage” atmosphere. I, myself—barring eventually being discovered emoting over birdbaths in the Yard & Garden section of the Home Depot and cast in a sleeper that will inevitably explode into overnight success and make me a household word overnight and just in time for Brad’s tiring of Angelina—may never actually be interviewed by James Lipton Inside The Actor’s Studio, which is (I am sure you’ll agree) a great tragedy because I would answer nothing less than spectacularly. And here you may be wondering: “Mo, what exactly might your responses be?” to which I can only reply wonder, my friends, no more, because we have reached the portion of today’s program that goes like this:

What is your favorite word? prehensile
What is your least favorite word? mature (especially when people say it with a hard t instead of a ch)
What turns you on? easy conversation
What turns you off? awkward silence
What sound or noise do you love? bells, Bach’s Double Violin, and my son singing to himself when he thinks no one’s listening
What sound or noise do you hate? any vacuum cleaner
What is your favorite curse word? goddamnmotherfuckingcocksuckinghell
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? dominatrix rock star chocolatier and part-time raconteur
What profession would you not like to do? anything relating to finance
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? (In the voice of Gilda Radner as Emily Latella) "Nevermind."

So, now it's your turn so get busy in the comment box. Because it's my birthday. And Mistress Mo says, now!

Sneaky Feelings

2008-06-29T11:56:00.008-04:00

There was that one time that we gave this guy a few hundred dollars’ worth of our original jewelry to sell on consignment in his new clubwear boutique … and then the boutique closed down. It took about an hour of cruising Richmond and asking around, but she found out where he lived, showed up on his doorstep, rousted him out of the stupor of an apparent Saturday morning wake-and-bake, and got our stuff back. It was beautiful to see.

She can find anybody online. Well, practically anybody; but often enough that you wouldn’t even bother with that practically thing. Ever find yourself with a nagging sense of wonder about what happened to your cousin’s ex-husband’s step-sister once removed or whatever? She’s on it. Former classmates are almost too easy; and that hot guy who used to work in the office next to me? Well, we’re pretty sure that he’s in the Witness Protection Program, because were he not, I’d have his e-mail address, phone number, naked pictures from his last vacation in Curacao, his ATM PIN, and a list of vulnerable access points to his house already. (I am only kidding about the ATM PIN.)

So (naturally) when LouLou’s crazy sister didn’t show up for work yesterday, and LouLou answered The Sister's supervisor’s call at 7:30 a.m. from the depths of her mild concussion, so began a chain reaction of unanswered phone calls throughout the day to the Sister who remained very much at large, and that reached it’s absolute zenith last night with me riding shotgun* for a trip into town for which I was given a pair of binoculars and an I-swear-to-God trench coat. The Sister was not at her apartment. The Sister was not at her place of employment. The Sister was not with her boyfriend. If The Sister had been anywhere to be found, she surely would’ve been, is all I’m sayin’.

Skip to this morning when The Sister turns up to have fallen on her way home from work Friday night and gotten herself carted to the ER and then subsequently operated upon and hospitalized for breaking a couple of bones. And how kind of fucking bizarre is that, I have to ask, given that The Sister works at and was carted back to the exact same hospital where our LouLou, on Friday morning, took her spectacular stage dive** into the imaginary audience that turned out to be a concrete-composite wall and ended up in the selfsame ER with a gushing head wound.

*Me, and Mr. Death.
**She wonders whether she said “WHAA!” when she fell, but it’s way more fun when you picture her pumping her fist first and yelling “AN-AR-KAY!” all the way down.

In My Ears: Accidents Will Happen – Elvis Costello – Armed Forces – 1979
Favorite Lyrics: “There’s so many people to see, so many people you can check up on…”

Figure It Like It's Friday

2008-06-27T14:05:00.004-04:00

Ya'll come back, now. Y'hear? ;-)

Strange Day, Indeed

2008-06-21T14:42:00.012-04:00

11:30 AM - Home Depot

Me: (hefting the 40 lb. birdbath base onto the flatbed while exuding fumes of absolute fury because some days? Some days it just doesn’t fucking pay to even get out of bed.) “You want your birdbath?!? You’ve GOT your birdbath. Here’s your birdbath!”
Mom: “I’m going to step over there and pretend that I don’t even know you. You do realize that you’re making a scene?”
Home Depot Associate: “Now, honey, there’s no need to do that by yourself so don’t go another step. We get short staffed around lunch time, but believe me, we do have people who will do that for you! But tell me, did any of them walk by and see you trying to lift this thing and not offer to help? Because I need to know that right now!”
Me: “No. And anyway, it’s done now, and I’m not angry because of that. I’m angry because she will not leave without a birdbath and your people will not be there when I have to be the one to get it out of my car and move it to the ten different places....”
Home Depot Associate: “Uh huh. I have days like that too, believe me. But we can get you to the checkout and put it in your car for you...”

At that point, my fury had been totally diffused and I had no choice but to apologize to my mother for making such an ass of myself, and it’s all so much funnier when you know that the lovely Home Depot Associate who came to my rescue in a pretty pink polo shirt under her orange apron and with her blonde hair done up just so in a ponytail and her frosted lipstick flawlessly applied … wait for it … wait for it … is a transsexual.

2:30 PM – Salon

LouLou: “… yelling stuff like ‘I’ll give you three sheep for your woman!’”
Me: “But I have to see it!”
C: “See? That’s what I’m thinking.”
LouLou: “Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s a boat thing. And Vikings? On the Potomac?”
Me: “Exactly. VIKINGS.”

3:00 PM – Fabric Store

And, this part? Let me just ask you, would you think in a million years that dropping into the 80-year-old fabric store in downtown Richmond to shop for period-correct fabrics for eighteenth century reenactment clothing would be one of the abjectly dirtiest experiences of my entire life? No, you probably wouldn’t think so. And there you would be so completely wrong. Because the 61-year-old little Jewish man who runs the place and is married to the woman that he never talks to and who had a nervous breakdown when he was a teenager and thought that he was Jesus and who kept staring salaciously at my toes? Yes, that he cut the price on that gorgeous Irish linen by half was a very, very good deal. But I’m pretty sure what he was getting at was that he’d discount it by even more in exchange for a form of currency that—besides being not at all legal tender—is, in fact, specifically illegal in something like 23 states.

6:30 PM – Bonefish Grill

LouLou: “Hey! We gotta run! Our 6:00 reservation? It was for 5:45.”

And dinner with LouLou’s work girls was lovely; and I’m told that I behaved well. Which is important because she’s on something of a mission to restore to me the finer of my derelict graces which is a nice way of saying that we’re trying to make me less of a social retard. Because not that we've worked through the whole process of elimination or anything, but we’re pretty sure that’s the only thing standing between me and a boyfriend.

Could not possibly be that I pitch temper tantrums in Home Depot, love nothing so much as the very idea of 21st Century Vikings, and attract mostly 61-year-old fabric store owners who tell dirty jokes and have a thing for feet.

In My Ears: Sad Cinderella – (The Late, Great) Townes Van Zandt
Favorite Lyrics: “...when the firedancers finish and leave you alone, with nothing but embers and sacks full of stone, that hang round your neck, slicing through to the bone, will there still be a place for your laughter?”

Caveat Emptor

2008-06-17T12:22:00.003-04:00

Or, Summertime, and the Livin' is Cheesy.

But let me explain. As a family, we tend toward being reasonably reckless snackers around here, meaning that a not insignificant amount of food gets dropped, which is just one of the reasons why our dog loves being our dog (at least as near as we can tell). We lose a crumb, somebody yells “T! Bonus!” and he’s on it. This morning, my son dropped two not insignificantly sized chunks of feta cheese. And that whole dogs and cheese thing? It didn’t get to be a cliché by accident, I’m thinking. And basically, I am wondering now if it would be too extreme a measure to just sell the house with the dog in it.

(Ludicrous Segue Alert!)

I have sort of fallen in love with these awesome 1940s style shoes at Target.com that I found quite by accident, and would buy immediately but that they seem to only come in “small” and would therefore necessitate my reenacting the role of one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters. And there’s just no winning the whole prospect of where to slice: heel or toe? Because despite their not being made of glass, they are inconveniently both sling-backed and peep-toed, and though we are often called upon to suffer for beauty, it’s never attractive when the carnage shows through.

(Non Sequitur Ahead!)

We are settling into summer mode which means that there is a lot of staying up late and watching television and reading books from very eclectic and precariously-balanced library stacks on the night stands and then sleeping way late in the morning and smelling like pool water and sunscreen and throwing together of a good veggie stir fry for dinner more often than not and trying not to schedule anything for real except getting everybody caught up at the dentist.

Puts actual work in much better balance, that whole summer spectrum of stuff. Know what I mean?

Parenting Short Cuts

2008-06-11T15:04:00.006-04:00

Tip #5: Make spirituality part of the artful fabric of everyday life rather than an organized obligation.

Me: "Did you lay out the clothes you want to wear for graduation?"
Sam: "I'm rethinking the shirt. I'm not sure I'm allowed to have stuff on it."
Me: "Did somebody say that specifically?"
Sam: "No, but they told us to wear what we'd wear to church."
Me: "Exactly. Wearing skulls is in our religion."

An Open Letter to Wendy's

2008-06-08T21:32:00.014-04:00

(For the benefit of the unbelievable number of people searching for this tidbit ... at least according to my site stats since this entry was first posted ... the song in the Wendy's Frosty Shake commercial is Turkey in the Straw. So there. And now, on to more important business.)

Dear Sadists,

Hello! You know that new "frosty shake" commercial of which you are probably so newly proud? Yeah, that one.

I'm sure it must have seemed like an awesome idea at the time, because it's about ice cream, and accompanied by that music that comes out of an ice cream truck! Wow. How did the Madison Avenue Geniuses who thought it up for you stop themselves from having a collective and highly inappropriate, involuntary physical bodily reaction when they conceived that gleaming gem? I mean, who could help but envision the sweetly Pavlovian response of joyous children skipping out to the curb at the first strains of that happy tune!

The thing is, there's this other Pavlovian response altogether that happens to some of us and that you probably didn't envision at all. And by some of us, I mean the specific ones of us who are parents. It's a reaction borne of years of the heart-stoppingly crazed sneak attacks of sharp little fingernails clinging to our summer-naked ankles while we panic through the bottoms of our purses and pockets counting by fives for at least enough spare change for a dreamsicle push-up or Sponge Bob on a stick before the damned wagon from hell turnes the corner and we then have to chase it down in one-bazillion-degree heat or face the prospect of riding out a bitterly disappointed bomb-popless tantrum to its snot-streaming sniffling end. Pressure like this, not even Dante imagined.

So, good going, Wendy's! I'm sure to go out and get me one of those!

As soon as the chest pain subsides.

My Own Evil Twin

2008-06-06T10:22:00.004-04:00

I have no news for you because I have been working a lot. My so-called job regularly generates a lot of admin work of the kind that only I can do, so I tend so work in cycles of being my own boss and then being my own secretary. The problem is that I am working very hard here in secretary mode and getting a surprisingly and disproportionately disappointing amount of work actually accomplished for which I can only blame my somewhat serious authority issues; and I’m sure there’s a really good Steven Wright joke in there somewhere, but I’m too bored to find it and would really rather be doing my nails and wondering how long it will be before I write myself up for failing to perform to my own expectations.

Other things that I have been doing that may or may not surprise you include listening to a lot of Chris Cornell, and Euphoria Morning, specifically. Now, when this one first came out forever ago practically, it was one of those albums that I intended to buy immediately because ya'll know that I was (and am) a huge fan of Soundgarden mostly because of the man’s spectacular voice and I just have this thing about men who sing mostly like men as opposed to, say singing like Sufjan Stevens (not that there's anything wrong with that), and maybe you know what I mean; but I digress. Anyway, I didn’t rush right out and get it and it wasn’t until I fortuitously found the thing tragically resigned to the downstairs bin at Plan 9 having a desperate CD ménage a trios with something by Cevilles & Cole and Cher or some such shit that I gave it a good listen and well, that was a few months ago and I haven’t much been able to stop. It has the requisite number of kinda loosey-goosey “I’ve always wanted to try…” tracks strung together in that experimental way that solo albums often are; but enough bits of it are classically gorgeous-sounding and artfully arranged and evocatively written that when friends who spy through your collection see it and ask “Hey, is this Chris Cornell thing really any good?” you’ll just smile knowingly and say “Yeah, it’s okay,” because you won’t want them to borrow it or anything.

Or maybe it's just me.

Get That, It Might Be The Phone

2008-05-30T10:34:00.004-04:00

Yeah, that ringing you hear is either the echoing din of tinnitus, or the sound of me phoning it in for yet another end-of-the-week post. It is, after all, Friday. So just be careful not to hit your head on the stage monitor, and make it count.

Just Because

2008-05-28T12:20:00.000-04:00

Sundown

2008-05-27T20:15:00.002-04:00

There are things that a youngest brother is good for, including but by no means limited to figuring out how to get the ice bin out of your freezer and singing Gordon Lightfoot songs with you at the kitchen table and pointing out to you how blasted unbelievably awesome is the portraiture of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. If he also happens to have married you a sister who’s into dayglo pink pedicures and putting primary red streaks in your son’s hair: better still. Then when they produce a nephew who starts his day by making up his own songs with lyrics like “maybe I’ll let you look in my suitcase, but maybe not”, then it’s just icing on the cake. And if you're lucky, you might then find yourself one sundown at the end of a perfect week at the end of May reflecting on the incredible visit that you've just had.

And if you have never had any of those things, you should be wishing right now that you were me.

Parenting Short Cuts

2008-05-25T09:19:00.004-04:00

Tip #4: Maintain a connection to nature in order to give your child a stronger sense of belonging to his/her world.

Me: "And at some point today, you should get a bath. Because I'm afraid that the only thing holding you together is dirt."
Sam: "Sweat, too."
Me: "And possibly some worm guts."
Sam: "Nah. No worm guts, but probably some bird poo."

The Russians Are(n't) Coming

2008-05-23T07:38:00.008-04:00

Last night was a two (count 'em, two) beer night at the Artist Underground Cafe with Suzuki Ton who were originally not going to be playing until late but then got moved up to start at around nine so that they'd be finished in time for some mysterious Russians who are probably still very much at large.

The moved-up and abbrevieated set notwithstanding: ya'll know that I like not much more than a band where there are not just drums, but Drums; and the Guitar Dudes stand with ther feet at that special Guitar Dude angle with the tops of their heads facing the crowd before they commence to shred with the time changes galore and melodies that diagram themselves inside your head like compound sentences and harmonies that hit you out of nowhere like a beautifully constructed cement truck.

Suzuki Ton is exactly that sort of a band.

If you are in and around Richmond and enjoy standing in basements and drinking beer while getting your face melted off, I recommend that you be on the look and listen for their next gig.

Russians? What Russians?

Flugel Like It's Friday

2008-05-16T14:59:00.002-04:00

I have a tremendously soft spot in my heart for those old fashioned sorts of songs that croon around flugelhorn and marimba or xylophone with maracca and bongo keeping the beat. You know the sorts of songs I mean ... the ones that make you feel like you're having late-night coffee with a beatnik matador in 1965, and that sound a lot like this:

Mise En Place

2008-05-09T16:11:00.004-04:00

You know how sometimes you just feel particularly in place and in the moment? Like when the weather is made-to-order for spicy Thai and jasmine tea at an outside table? And the company is perfect and the conversation is funny and relaxed and you’re making new friends and don’t feel like you have to be anybody except yourself? And you’re listening to somebody talk about somebody else when that somebody else walks right by on the sidewalk perfectly on cue? And you’re wishing you had some chopsticks when the new friend you’re making says exactly what you’re thinking, only out loud? Yeah. Last night.

Delivering very merry un-birthday presents.

Lush highlights and mid-lights and lowlights.

Driving with the windows down.

Drunken noodles.

Harry’s fedora.

P: “This one time …”
C: “… at band camp.”
Me: (snort)

Mexican Moon and Tin Machine in the downstairs $3 used bin at Plan 9.

I love Richmond in the spring time.

Mother of Invention

2008-05-06T10:58:00.005-04:00

Today is my mother’s sixty-fifth birthday. She will not read this because some of the things that I write around here would make her head melt like Toht’s when they opened up the Ark; but she doesn’t need to read this to know how I feel about her. I have the luxury of showing and telling her more regularly than most.

My mother is the second youngest of eleven children born to people who believed in that whole teaching-by-example thing; and she never really wanted to be anything but a parent when she grew up except for that very short period of time when she thought she wanted to be a nun. It was sometime around then that some friends of hers took the somewhat severe measure of carting her off to a (God forbid) nightclub where she got hit on by the house band’s drummer who told her that he was seventeen when he was really only almost sixteen, but then she eventually married him anyway. That settled, they began industriously trying to reproduce; only the first two efforts went screamingly wrong. I’ll spare the hideous details, but the fact that my mother still willingly rolled those dice after what she’d already gone through is a miracle the magnitude of which you have no fucking idea. And when I worked like it was supposed to and came out alive and without killing her, she figured she could maybe do it again. So she did. Twice.

And the universe threw our little family some huge shit and she ended up on her own with three kids and zero resources. But every time things were obviously not going to work out how she hoped they would, she braced herself and just somehow invented a new way.

I get asked a lot how I manage, as an adult, to cohabitate with my mother. The answer is that if you’re lucky enough to have a mom like that, you stick close for as long as you get the chance to. You try to pay attention because whatever she's doing, she's probably doing it right. And you only occasionally ... very occasionally ... yell that she’s seriously finally driven you smooth out of your fucking skull.

But mostly, it’s awesome to the extreme.

Has He Lost His Mind?

2008-05-03T20:54:00.005-04:00

The thing is that I am a huge fan of Robert Downey, Jr. Less Than Zero and Restoration are among my favorite movies, ever. And, yes, I even watched me some Ally McBeal for a while there. The man is beautiful and ridiculously talented and pretty much perfect except for, well, you know. But still.

That said, I cringed a little (okay, a lot) when I heard he'd taken the lead in Iron Man, sort of embarassed for him if the truth be told; although why starring as one of the more kickass Marvel superheroes seemed somehow worse than hearing that he'd ended up crawling through a window and passing out in somebody else's house on a bender, I can't begin to explain. Really, Tom Morello as an Afghani prison guard is less of a stretch. And seriously, I am even a ginormous fan of that whole superhero business, and the Marvel ones in particular; so there is absolutely zero good reason why the mere suggestion of Iron Man + RDJ didn't immediately equate in my mind to something even better than ... well this will make no sense unless you know me exceptionally well ... but better than a particularly hot filovirus, or really dirty profanity. And porn.

But it didn't. And holy, freaking, shit. I could not have been more wrong.

Rock It Like Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s

2008-04-25T11:54:00.003-04:00

100% on Medium Level, bitchez.

There's a Crevice Tool Song?

2008-04-17T15:47:00.003-04:00

Today, you get search stats, just in case you care. I do, becuase I am nothing if not deeply concerned by how, exactly, the entire Internet including people that I don't even know find themselves here.

2 10.53% ransom poetry
1 5.26% schwa shiggity
1 5.26% shiggity schwa
1 5.26% i am secretive
1 5.26% tilt a whirl
1 5.26% poet ransom's concerns
1 5.26% crevice tool song
1 5.26% head riddle
1 5.26% shiggity shiggity schwa
1 5.26% make you whirl
1 5.26% homo.md
1 5.26% time tells poem
1 5.26% invention of the kiss* cupid and psyche
1 5.26% shiggity sc
1 5.26% katy ransom poetry
1 5.26% penis bouquet
1 5.26% penis shiny pink spots
1 5.26% whirl tattoo

To anyone who cares, The Ransom Poetry Project is HERE. Oh, and Dude: See A Doctor. Now would be good.

Rock It Like It's LouLou's Birthday!

2008-04-11T11:43:00.001-04:00

Rock it Like Tomorrow's Forecast

2008-04-04T10:46:00.003-04:00

This Saturday

2008-04-03T11:29:00.010-04:00

If you're not at my yard sale, then you should definitely be in N'Awlins to check out the incredible art of a couple of people that I love:

Buy some stuff. It'll make you cool!

Career Move

2008-04-01T08:27:00.008-04:00

My Dearest Friends,

As you are no doubt aware, I have not been posting much of late. This is because "my so-called job" has finally driven me over the proverbial edge, and I have decided to embark upon a new career adventure. Because of your loving support of my ramblings over the past few years, I have decided to share with you an incredible opportunity go get in on the ground floor, as it were, of my latest entrepreneurial venture. It is my experienced and educated opinion as a professional marketer that this will certainly be "the next big thing".

I assume that you are aware of the sudden and rising demand for cat skins in the United Kingdom. Ever since some famous people were seen sporting them, the simple laws of supply and demand have caused an acute shortage of quality pelts to fill orders already taken.

Not being certain whether you're knowledgable in the trading of cat pelt futures, as such, please allow me to explain that a good Third World Cat Man can skin out approximately sixty to seventy cats per twelve-hour shift while being paid a wage of thirty cents per hour. When last I checked, the pelts were going for about eight dollars (or five hundred seventy-two Euros) for the black ones and up to twelve dollars for the multicolored with Calico and Persian in exceptionally short supply and going for upwards of twenty to thirty dollars each!

My plan is to incorporate within a single industrial Cat Farm compound, the addition of a Rat Farm, which would take up only a minimum of capital space. The rats would then be used to feed the cats, and the rats themselves would be fed from whatever remains of the cats we'd be unable to move in the local markets.

During a recent business trip overseas, I became suddenly aware of a tract of land up for bidding that would be perfct for our venture. My plan is to start with about five and one half acres which will encompass the animal compounds, workers living quarters, and skinning sheds. This tract of land is both convenient to a major seaport and adjacent to railroad tracks, with rail being far superior to trucking, fuel prices being what they are. Just a short trip to the coast and aboard a ship they go.

As you can see, the whole enterprise is self-supporting and a sure win. The cats eat the rats, the rats eat the cats, and we all eat caviar! I'm even in contact with an innovative firm in Boston to discuss the enhancement of cats bred with genes of the Highland King Snake. With the cats eventually skinning themselves twice a year, the labor factor would be nearly eliminated.

As I've room for only a very limited number of investors, your prompt repsonse to this offering is urgently requested.

Please feel free to phone me, toll free, with further questions at 1-800-107-3665... that's 1-800-APR-FOOL.

The Numbers

2008-03-30T10:42:00.002-04:00

There was this one ad -- a Nike ad of all things -- that ran in the early nineties. I liked it so much that I cut it out and framed it and it's been a fixture on my desk ever since. It reads: "A woman is often measured by the things she cannot control. She is measured by the way her body curves or doesn't curve, by where she is flat or straight or round. She is measured by 36-24-36 and inches and ages and numbers, by all the outside things that don't ever add up to who she is on the inside. And so if a woman is to be measured, let her be measured by the things she can control, by who she is and who she is trying to become. Bcause as every woman knows, measurements are only statistics. And statistics lie."

The thing is this: that women know and understand a few things about numbers.

In a way that you, Senator Patrick Leahy, never will.

Parenting Short Cuts

2008-03-21T10:21:00.005-04:00

Tip #3: Turn commonplace opportunities into creative motivators.

Sam: "Can I have breakfast?"
Me: "You can have breakfast. You can make breakfast. You can imagine breakfast, reinvent breakfast, paint a picture of breakfast, write a play or poem about it, enact a performance piece all on the theme of breakfast. You can make a breakfast collage, put an installation piece right here in the kitchen depicting breakfast, do a dance about breakfast, sculpt breakfast in a variety of media including, probably, breakfast itself. You can write a song about breakfast in practically any musical genre, shave it into your head, contemplate breakfast in other cultures, meditate on breakfast for the sake of world peace, demonstrate in the streets about breakfast, send up smoke signals about it…"
Sam: "Can I tattoo breakfast onto my arm?"
Me: "Don’t be a smartass."

Encouraging Blasphemy Since 2004

2008-03-20T17:14:00.002-04:00

In today’s news, at least one person has landed on the Tilt-A-Whirl this week after Googling the phrase “pope bukkake.”

For the moment, my work here is done.

Masterpiece, Mutha'uckahs.

2008-03-14T10:11:00.016-04:00

Okay, so last night was art and tuneage night at The Boy Child's totally awesome elementary school featuring lots of rockin' numbers peformed on recorder, a table where you could totally get your hair gelled up into a mohawk, some surreptitious Something About Mary jokes, the unveiling of his grade's marvelous mural project, and me getting hijacked by the science teacher.

It happened when I was sneaking back to my place in the crowd after first sneaking up behind the riser to get a shot of my son who is always on the top tier because he is very tall. And this woman comes at me out of nowhere and asks me am I my boy's mom, so I say yes, and she completely unleashes the flood of all complimentarianism about how my boy is the most polite and conscientious and gentle and amazing person she has ever met in her life (I am not making any of this up) and that she swore that if she ever got to meet the parent(s) of this boy, she would immediately let them know what a "masterpiece" of a child he is.

I cannot possibly argue with a single word.

Jane! Stop This Crazy Thing!

2008-03-13T10:54:00.003-04:00

The French have an actual term for it: l’esprit d’escalier, the wit of the stairway. The response that doesn’t occur to you until you’re already on the stairs.

And here’s the thing: the inside of my head is kind of a double staircase... you know, like in mansions of the Old South where they split off in two directions. And one side has good, solid, old-fashioned stairs. The other side, however, is not so much stairs as an historically-revisionist runaway escalator.

On the one side, somebody asks me a question, and I (more often than not) answer reflexively, without thinking, usually in short quips that sneak out only half-baked just before the trip switch warns my brain that my mouth has opened and is in danger of revealing what else is inside. (Rhett to Mammy, Rhett to Mammy: Scarlett is down the stairs—repeat—down the stairs! Over!)

The other side? It scrolls through regurgitated conversations until well into the middle of the night, embellishing them with the wit that I had not the presence of mind for in the actual moment. And I hate that I live inside of my head to this degree; because there, on the escalator, I am communicative in a way that I only rarely am in real life. And I know you yahoos might think I live my Real World life the way I do here online, replete with exhaustingly revealing verbosity, pervasive profanity, and extending into the realm of Far TMI. But in the real world, I am a somewhat guarded individual. You know, the way that The Pope is somewhat catholic or bukkake is somewhat perverse (cannot wait to see what that does to my search stats).

And knowing that, you might be thinking: “Mo, if you just opened up and talked a little more, you would probably have more friends,” to which I can only reply, “Hang on a minute, because once you know what I might have said, it will explain everything.”

For instance and example, just last week there was that time this one guy said, “No wonder nobody wants me!” and I just sat there and laughed along kind of sympathetically.

But later on the escalator, I bat my mutantly redundant eyelashes and say “That’s absolutely not true, because I find you incredibly attractive.” And now you’re thinking something like wow, if a vaguely good-looking and very self-possessed woman said something like that to me, I would so date her immediately. Until you hear what the escalator churns out next, which is something like “... although that alone is historically a good indicator that there is something deeply wrong with you, but certainly not so glaringly obvious that I’d figure it out before we ended up unhappily married for several years or you got extradited to face felony charges in another state.”

Uh huh? See what I mean?

And so I am embarking on this personal initiative of sorts. To mine the happy medium somewhere between The Wit and The Crazy.

I’m thinking: Rope Ladder.

Melissa Has a Band

2008-03-10T21:10:00.002-04:00

And it sounds like this. (And by "this", what I really mean is "Success Approximation is particularly ridiculously fucking awesome.")

Depends.

2008-03-08T09:44:00.002-05:00

You know, what nobody ever talks about is what’s in the glass. Not whether it’s half full or half empty, but what it’s half full or half empty of (*). And this most certainly matters, indeed. I mean, if the glass is half full or empty of water, then, eh. But if the glass is half full or half empty of tequila, then half a glass is really more than sufficient. Plus, if it’s half empty because I have just consumed the other half, then I probably don’t give a shit either way, now do I?

"Scrapbooking, we're scrapbooking, we're what's happening..."

2008-03-03T18:04:00.006-05:00

You should know that it didn’t happen exactly like this, but when I string together the various conversational highlights of yesterday, it makes for a far more entertaining read in a Reader’s Digest Condensed sort of a way, if Reader's Digest cussed. A lot.

We were scrapbooking, which is not an activity in which I regularly engage. Not that I don’t appreciate the whole scrapbooking concept, because seriously ya’ll—put me within reach of paper, glue, scissors, and packets of tiny little ornamental crap Made in China and I can entertain myself indefinitely; but it’s not something for which I usually have The Time. Anyway, I participated because LouLou had to scrapbook as one of the many arcane admin requisites to what I'm coming to call "adaptive" parenthood; and in case you care, that whole process seemingly goes: first you try not to projectile vomit over paperwork; then you ~~die~~try not to projectile vomit over things involving social workers and administrators; then you actually do projectile vomit over how much lawyers deduct from their retainers just to return phone calls; then you ~~die~~try not to projectile vomit onto the people who stand up at the head of the room in classes designed to let you in on obscure secrets like that (OMG) babies cry; then you scrapbook; then ~~you die~~they give you a baby.

Anyway, since you weren’t there to enjoy it live and in person, I thought I’d share that when you piece together the various elements of the scrapbooking conversational process, you get something like this. Expletives have been deleted because, seriously people, we’re talking about getting her a baby here. But they were the really good ones that you’d totally never say in front of your mother.

LouLou: “Okay, page one, letter, page two, letter, page three family, page four, family, page five, page six, page seven… a selected poem. Something to warm the heart. You should write something heartwarming for me, but you cannot do it as a ransom note.”
Me: “So I guess a dirty limerick is out of the question?”
LouLou: (Blinks at me slowly. Hums: What a Friend We Have In Jesus.)
Me: “This circle is still too big.”
LouLou: (Half hour of just this:) “Where did it (expletive) go?!? Watch… watch… watch! I scan, and, it goes! But where does it go!?!”
Me: “I need the tape tape. This circle is exactly the same size.”
LouLou: “Well you had to go get all Missing Piece Meets the (expletive) Big O.”
Me: “Who was it that wanted circles? And let me just remind you that the Big O respected the (expletive) Missing Piece’s many talents. Did The Big O dis the Missing Piece? I think not.”
LouLou: “Maybe it will be better if I just say (whole new expletive)” (Humming again.)

The End.

Leapin' Leap Day!

2008-02-29T09:47:00.007-05:00

I have to tell you. I have agonized over what song I should choose to rock the Friday that is Leap Day. Okay, maybe not agonized; but I have certainly given it more than a minute's worth of thought. And I know what you're thinking: "Mo, isn't the so obvious choice, Leap of Faith, by Bruce Springsteen?" to which I can only reply that on the list of songs that I tend toward actively disliking, the work of Bruce Springsteen is disproportionately well represented even if you discount that Born In the USA is on said list seven hundred times all by itself.

Of course, there is this particular jazz cut, entitled, nearly appropriately enough Leapfrog, of which I am particularly fond because it features Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Buddy Rich which is sort of a perfect storm of bebop awesomeness as far as I am concerned, evidenced by the fact that my dog's name is Thelonious, I almost named my son Bird, I have the same birthday as Buddy Rich (which in the eyes of my father The Drummer totally made up for me being a girl), and the only autograph that I will ever own is a CD scrawled by Dizz. But all that said, I was going for someting that would better capture the spirit of Today.

In the end, I settled on something a little closer to home. Something that speaks hope while we're busily bending over for our $5/gallon gas, presidential debates that reference SNL sketches, CAFO meat, and cost plus contracting.

Rock It, my friends, Like It's Leap Day 2008...

P.P.S. If I ever started an Oom-pah Punk band, it would totally be called Alpenhorn Head and our first album would be entitled Musician-Pattern Baldness, featuring the smash hit single Sporting a Keith Morris.

For LouLou

2008-02-28T13:50:00.004-05:00

P.S. There is this phenomenon that happens mostly to trumpet players where they lose their hair because all the huffing and puffing deters the critical flow of oxygen to the scalp required to sustain hair growth. My brother and I, both band nerds, were having an in-depth conversation about exactly this once in a theatre while waiting for a movie to begin and rating the various degrees of bald-ing-ness in the room on a scale from piccolo trumpet to flugel, when a totally bald guy sat down in front of us and I cracked, "alpenhorn" which a) is the one and only time I've ever successfully made drink spew out of my brother's nose, and b) is why we've subsequently referred to musician-pattern baldness as "working on a case of Alpenhorn Head." Anyhoo, I've just decided to give the condition a new name, and it will henceforth be called "sporting a Keith Morris."

Nevermind the Neuroses

2008-02-19T10:47:00.005-05:00

I am officially well again, which is a darn good thing because I am now also officially the only member of my household who has not spent the last 24-hours diligently trying to hack up a lung. Sam seems much better this morning; though Bill is coughing while simultaneously denying to me that he has a cough, which is just pretty much the way that goes.

But that is not all.

My mother is now down for the count. And ya'll might not know exactly what that means, but let me just promise you that it involves a great deal of disinfectant, the crisper drawers of my refrigerator will probably never have been cleaner, and it's really only a matter of hours before I catch myself vaccuming things that should probably not be vaccumed at all.

Anybody seen the dog?

This weekend just flu by!

2008-02-18T11:00:00.003-05:00

Hahaha. I slay me.

Anyway, this weekend, I read two books, because having a nasty touch of the flu is really good for that sort of a thing.

Book The First was Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker; and I’ll tell you exactly what B. Gone: five hours of my life that I totally want back.

Book The Second was Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (no link because the Wiki entry is a total spoiler), which was a Christmas present to me from Lucy, who lives with my brother and sister-and-law and nephew and turns out to have really awesome taste in fiction. I mean, for being an actual dog and all. If you have not yet read this book, add it to your list (unless you are LouLou, in which case you should absolutely, under no circumstances read this book, ever) because: wow. It’s about a depression-era circus and the characters are amazing and the story unfolds beautifully and the ending is fabulous and it is simply the single most transporting thing that I have read in ages.

As you were.

Om Mani Padme Hum

2008-02-11T08:54:00.000-05:00

Me: "Hello?" (indistinct chanting over the phone)

My Brother: "Ssshh, I’m meditating."

Me: "We can talk. It will meditate for you."

Bro: "This is awesome! I could never have guessed. And it’s a good thing I didn’t try, because I’m not-a-bettin'-man. Get it? ‘Cause it’s Tibetan? And I’m not Tibetan? Hahaha! And it plays like four different things! I had to kind of figure that out by accident because I can’t read the box. Who is this guy anyway?"

Me: "I have no idea. Presumably the monk doing the chanting. It's kind of a Monk in a Box."

Bro: "That’s exactly what it is! So now I’m sitting here under a tree."

Me: "A bodhi tree?"

Bro: "A shoe tree, actually..."

Sugar Sugar

2008-02-09T16:08:00.000-05:00

I am no longer so much undecided about for whom I should vote, because I'm pretty sure right now that our president needs to be whomever it is that invented... these.

Did Somebody Say Sweatshirt?

2008-02-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

Zips high up on the neck. Almost like a hoodie, but without the hood. Smallest possible size.

So Just Pull On Your Hair

2008-02-01T12:12:00.000-05:00

Or stop pulling on your hair, as the case may be. Because it is Friday...

This new generation?

2008-01-30T09:52:00.000-05:00

They get all the good stuff. Laptops, iPods, wireless internet, 500 channels of TV, maybe even a woman or a black man for president, and Robert Smith's voice in a way sexier package.

Parenting Short Cuts

2008-01-24T20:52:00.001-05:00

Tip #2: Seize every opportunity to teach by example.

Sam: "Mom, I forgot. What does repetitive mean?"
Me: "What?"
Sam: "Repetitive."
Me: "What?"
Sam: "Repetitive!"
Me: "What?!?"