holiday trees
Saturday, mar. 15, 2008 | 0 comments
Inspired by my friend Jessica, who crocheted up a flock of little green trees as favors at her December-time party, I crafted up some of my own to hand out as gifts for Christmas 2006:
(All photos by Marco!)
Some trees I decorated with embroidered stars, others I outfitted with a cap of snow by switching to white yarn for the last few layers. The results were very cute, and they really chomped up the many driving hours between Oakland and San Diego, nice.
everyone's best friend
Saturday, mar. 15, 2008 | 0 comments
was watching this show re: dogs (which brings to mind the finite proportions of my micro-life), and they were doing this in-depth thing about the important roll the canine (unit) has played throughout history and different cultures. The show attributed this love of the dog to the fact that man's best friend plays the role of "social lubricant," meaning that people tend to approach, interact and exchange phone numbers with dog owners. Social lubricant. They actually called it that. That phrase has now been coined. The dog show suddenly took on this freaky sinister beastiality air and I had to stop watching.Confronted with post-television silence, I started "free-stylin'" on the whole idea of social lubricant. I have long been of the opinion that major disasters are a form of social lubricant. After "living" though both the 'frisky quake of '89 and the LA biggie, I can now scientifically state that the BARS ARE FULL after plate techtonics take a city for a spin. Anything over a 6.0 sends the singles scene into a frenzy. I'm sure that one reason for this baby-mouse-like clumping is that mostly people just don't want to be alone for yet another aftershock. When you are blasted awake at 4:30 in the morning by being thrown violently from your bed and onto the floor, you start thinking that maybe dying alone isn't so cute. (Of course, I'm not exactly sure what instinct has to say about dying with a bunch of drunks in a crowded bar.) But I think the real reason everyone feels so social after a collective near death experience is that they finally have a sure-fire topic of conversation. "Where were YOU?...No way, really?...So, can I buy you a beer?" The beauty of the topic is that it leads to so many more: death, history, fate, epic disaster movies.
Of course none of it made a dent in my single status since confronting my own mortality just made me feel sinister and bitter.
verbal patchouli
Saturday, mar. 15, 2008 | 0 comments
he very first thing she said to me was, "Your hair looks good bleached out like that...much better than it does on those N-I-G-G-E-R-S." She actually spelled it out, just like my mother used to with O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E so as not to get me prematurely riled about upcoming chocolatey libations.
Of course the woman's like ninety, so she has senility and/or that "from another era" thing to offer up as an excuse. Whatever.
But the thing I found particularly amazing about this crazily racist comment (other than the fact that she managed to work it into the conversation within ten scant seconds, and she did it with a topic as innocuous as hair) was the manner in which she said it to me. The cutesy, shared secret way she spelled out that naughty word (careful! negroes might be about!) and the use of the word "those," gave the comment a real "us versus them" feel. Like she was sure she was preaching to the converted, even though she had launched into her thing before I had a chance to say word one.
That may just be the M.O. of a truly racist person: She's so sure she's in the right, she doesn't wait to see if I'm like minded before she launches into her poisonous rhetoric. Even so, I took it as a complete insult that she thought I was the kind of person who was down with that shit.
It's just like patchouli wearers. They love the way that stuff smells so much, that they can't possibly conceive of a person not liking it.
One once came to a party at my house (not someone I had invited, obviously, but a friend of a friend). At some point, we unthinkingly let her use our phone. And from that point forward, it reeked, to the point of "let's walk to 7-11 and use their payphone," for an entire week. Right then and there, we implemented a policy where all patchouli wearers had to obtain permission, in writing, at least two weeks before entering our home. Luckily, since I tend to give patchoulies a wide berth, I never really got close enough to another one to actually put our regulation to the test.
I always imagine patchouli lovers starting of by dabbing a reasonable amount (as if there were really such a thing, but no mind) behind their ears, maybe on their knee backs, and then just as they're heading out the door, they stop. "You know, out in the fresh air and all, I can hardly smell my oil! And really, when a scent comes as close to heaven/sex/world-peace as patchouli does, there's just no room for subtlety." So they dash back to their be-tapestried lair and just pour the whole fucking bottle right over their heads. Or maybe, like drunks looking to "maintain the buzz," they keep going back for just a little bit more, a little bit more, until it's way, way too late (or like, in the words of a comedienne I once saw, beauty pageant contestants: "what, do they get their teeth capped, forget, and then get them capped AGAIN?"). Whatever the thinking that gets them there, they all end up wearing enough of the stuff to fell someone really tall, yet it's obvious that these Patchouli People think they're spreading the wealth with their pungent odor. But really it's just nose rape.
This very "what I love, the world must love" thinking is exactly what that racist spelling bee was dishing out. I've also noticed that many cab drivers I encounter tend to have this very same verbal patchouli problem. "Frisco's a beautiful place," a driver said to me once, "if only it weren't for all the lesbians." Or when I asked another cab man how he was holding up, he said, "fine, except all the blacks and mexicans keep stiffing me."
Stinks!
going off the rails
Saturday, mar. 15, 2008 | 0 comments
o there's this new thing that's been happening to me. When I yawn, my jaw gets stuck open. It sounds like a small thing, perhaps even funny — even I think it's funny (unfortunately, it's quite difficult to laugh with your mouth stuck open, something I never knew before). But really I can't tell you how alarming it is, not to mention painful.
If you were raised in interchangeable condos like I was (the kind where if you drink too much Riunite on ice over at the Velvet Turtle, you'll never find your house again), then you know the curse of those sliding, mirrored closet doors. For weeks they'd roll from side to side beautifully, soothingly. Then one day you'd go to grab, say, a pair of jellies, and the door would shudder and screech and then just stop moving. Since it was easy to get riled up in those days — you're late for school, you're a teen aged girl with hormones coursing, your mom's out front, honking the horn (fucking A!) — you'd put your shoulder into it, and then you'd really be in a jam: no openies, no closies.
Well, that's what my jaw's been doing. I can go days with it being totally fine. I'll eat tall sandwiches, express shock, floss my molars, and nothing will happen. Then one day I'll open my big mouth, and it just gets derailed.
And that's not all. A few weeks ago, I got the flu. And I mean a real flu, not just one of those really bad colds that adults call the flu. No I had one of those things where you can't even watch Oprah because it requires too much focus. Where you spend 72 hours in the same pair of pyjamas. Where you actually carry a spaghetti pot around with you as you move from bed to couch to bed, just in case you "don't make it."
On day three, the hot spits woke me in the middle of the night. A personal inventory told me I had just enough time to make it to the WC, so I shuffled off. I made it to the toilet with bare seconds to spare, so I immediately dropped into hurl mode (lids up, me crouched with hands on each side of the bowl, mouth open). And...nothing. And nothing. And nothing. I hadn't eaten anything for days, so there really just wasn't much there to work with, you see. Finally it became apparent that there was nothing left to do but abort mission, so I dropped out of formation...only to discover that my mouth was locked open.
"Distressed," I slid down to the tile floor, and curled up right then and there, shivering and breathing through my gaping mouth. I just didn't have the energy to do anything else. So I started thinking, exploring the new levels I had sunk to. "Man, if I had a baby right now," I thought, "and it started crying, was hungry or needed something, perhaps a diaper or a "dummy" (which I've always thought a funny name for a nipple substitute, but that's way more there than here), I would be utterly unable to get up and deal with it."
Context: I'm getting to that age where the group of friends that got married during that first wedding wave (which hit about two years ago) are either getting divorced or having babies. While the divorce thing is pretty terrible and totally non-enviable, the baby thing is tugging at my, what, my apron strings? My fallopian tubes? And, for the first time in my life, I had started thinking that maybe a baby of my own wouldn't be such a bad idea. In fact, it sounded kind of nice.
But then, as I lay there carping out on the bathroom floor, I suddenly realized that I just didn't have that distinct inner strength ladies need to become mothers. It was real sad!
Eventually, I got my mouth closed (you actually have to force it down, which isn't pleasant), and I got over the flu. But I still haven't had babies. Nosiree! I can't even deal with my mal-adjusted kitten (a monster-cute b&w baby with extra toes on her front paws — inbred! — who was rescued from a cat lady's house where she lived with 40 other kitties — inbred!). While she shits in the litter box, she insists on peeing in the bathtub (inbred!), so we've taken to keeping the tub filled with water, which, while weird, has managed to stop her peeing down the drain. But now she's taken to peeing beside the tub. So Paul's been going to all these animal behavior sites, trying to find out how to deal with her. Today's solution, cover the "problem area" (not the cat, but where she's been pissing) with dishwashing liquid, which actually looks just like cat pee, but, of course, smells much better, and has a texture that cats apparently don't dig. We shall see. Another thing she does is wake us up at 6 am every morning, bringing her toys — her furry thing, the crunchy ball, the book shelf bracket — into the bed, one by one, and then chirping until we throw something for her (she does fetch, which is insanely cute, but not so much in the pre-dawn hours).
So yeah, no babies. But maybe I will go to the doctor about my jaw.
won't you be my neighbor?
Saturday, mar. 15, 2008 | 0 comments
One more time, so I don't get sued, this column is re-printed here thanks to permission from MSN (who owns all this stuff now).Won't you be my neighbor?
by evany thomasI live in a fairly rough area of town.
It's an interesting neighborhood in that it's right on the cusp of everything: gangland, druggie zone, and hooker scene all butt up against a mellow family existence. This mingling of mighty disparate groups creates a kind of exciting plate-techtonic effect, where everything's in a constant state of flux and you never know what's going to happen next.
My room faces right out on a busy street, and since I often work at home, I've become intimate with the amazing sights and sounds that cycle through during the average beautiful day in the neighborhood. Clanging garbage men, kids merrily taunting eachother on their way to school, rowdy skate rats grinding up the curb, not-afraid-to-announce-they-gotta-beef-with-the-world street flotsam and jetsam, jealous cat fighting dames ("he wouldn't WANT me if you coulda kept him SATISFIED!"), booming kicker-boxed and sub-woofered cars, the sirens of the city's finest, tinkling popsicle carts, hipsters heading home after last call, and traffic-traffic-TRAFFIC.
The first night was terrible. One car from Hades cruised up and down the street, modified mufflers sonic-booming holes in the universe, for about 3 hours. When that finally let up, a heartbroken drunk took over, keening beneath my window about the mistreatment he had received from a one "Lucille" (a woman who I just couldn't help think was probably much better off since "going solo"). He was SO LOUD that I coulda sworn that he was, if not actually inside my head, then at least sitting at the foot of my bed, screeching "WHYYYYYYYYY!"...4 AM came and went as I lay there wide awake watching the endless headlights sweep across my ceiling like a prison spot-light, mind depressedly churning over the painful idea of having to move again (I hate moving more than anything...taxes, nails on a chalk board, heatwaves, mosquitos, litterbox maintenance, and liver even).
However, on the second night I slept like a baby. I guess that's partly because I was so super nova tired from the previous night that I could have slept through a Sledge-O-Matic session with Gallagher. But it was also because I was actually getting used to all the nocturnal action. Soon the cars and the freaky people became kind of lulling, creating an oceanic white noise that I probably now can't sleep without.
I've grown to love all the noise and the people. They carry an intrinsic energy and excitement totally lacking in the 'burbs that I formatived in, something that's also missing in other "safer" neighborhoods of The City that I've lived in. That energy (whoa! I'm sounding a little hippy here...sorry!) is why I moved to the Big City in the first place. The trade off to all the I'm-so-alive "vibes" (sorry again!) is that I have to lead a slightly warier lifestyle. I take a cab now when I would have walked home in another part of town, and when I DO walk around, I'm permanently on yellow alert, sweeping my eyes from corner to corner looking for alarming people or activities.
And my car, always a beater, is now just shy of Mad Maxdom. Since my move to the happening 'hood, it's been keyed, hit-and-runned, my cute dice valve covers were lifted, and the stereo's been stolen (actually, stolen's too nice a word...my stereo was RIPPED from my car, popping off heater buttons and knobs and shredding half the dash in the process...and they didn't even leave a ham sandwich in the glove box, a special something the stereo thieves did for a friend of mine).
Living without a radio has proven to be quite life-changing. I do quite a bit of driving, and without tunes and NPR to distract me, I get a lot more thinking done (which, for a girl who's always thought too much, is probably not a good thing). I'm also a lot less in touch with current events. And I talk to myself all the time.
To counteract the ill-effects of life without a car radio, I've been tuning in elsewhere. Since I have lousy reception at home, and there's no radio at the office, my radio fix now comes over the internet. And the stuff I get there actually better than anything I was getting before (the Bay Area may have a lot to offer, but the radio stations really suck here). An online CD jukebox means I can listen to entire albums of some of my favorite bands, FREE. And I now get to listen to the LA morning radio show that I've been sorely missing.
All in all, it's been one of those "tisn't life funnyo" things, where a people-are-evil event (the removal of my beloved car stereo) has made way for something interesting and enriching (neato online radio).
Yup, that's me, making lemonade out of life's lemons.