note to self: take egg off speed dial

Thursday, mar. 9, 2006   |   0 comments

Yesterday my very favorite Paul made his debut in the pages of the New York Times with a story entitled “Take Egg off Speed Dial,” which covers the art and feasibilities of cooking eggs with cellphones, an iron, a dishwasher, and even a drip coffee maker. The story looks even better on paper, as I immediately confirmed by running out and buying the tangible version of the paper for point-at-able posterity. A triumphant event on like seventeen different levels! Such, such good news.

Yesterday I also went to go see Alice Shaw’s slide show at the SF Arts Commission Gallery. Her photos always feature a funny/odd combination of elements — my favorite this time around were the two candid portraits of people caught wearing tees featuring life-size portraits of other (famous) people, with the tee-face coming off as an equal party in pose — and this, her latest show, had me laughing out loud at least six different times (or more…only my date Jill knows for sure). I’m a huge fan of both Alice and her photography, and if you’re ever in near proximity to either, I heartily recommend you rearrange your schedule accordingly.

Also good yesterday: Pride and Prejudice (total crying jags? two. additional notables? wow on that “thousand-year-old property gone to seed” scenery), cookies bought from Citizen Cake, pizza, and the company of Caroleen, Adrienne, Liz, and the aforementioned Jill. We also had yet another screening of Marco‘s new Trapped in the Closet DVD. (He and I accidentally got trapped watching the first five Trappeds one day on MTV and then we went on to spend the next few weeks singing along to all of life’s mundanities — “We’re out of half-and-half!” “You sipped it up? Now feel my wrath!” etc. So I bought the DVD as my Valentine’s Day present to him. And when he unwrapped it, he couldn’t help himself, he just said, with a blank face, “Why did you buy this?” Since then, he’s tried to explain away his underwhelmed response by saying the accent was on the “why” and the “buy” not the “this,” which of course makes no difference, which in turn is why I love him so.) Each time we force someone to watch this “hip hopera,” it’s met with a different response. Last night, it received an awesome stunned silence, which was an altogether different take than all the laughing, yelling, screaming, and carrying on that that went down when Stephen, Jessica, Sandra, Brian, Marco, and I first saw it (our experience pretty much exactly mirroring Pamie and friends’ shared laugh meltdown “moment just after the last word in Chapter Nine”). And there were a lot fewer giggles and puzzled objections than Kristin (giggles) and Pat (objections) gave out when I forced them watch it. And less horrified cackling than Shree produced when I made her watch it. In any case, I can safely report that, after four viewings in two weeks, the ten-second loop of moisture-drop beats doesn’t quite hold up. Still I say to you what Pam said to me, back when I was down in LA in February. I asked her, all innocent, “Can you explain this whole insane Closet thing, what the hell?” And she said to me, with the complete conviction of a true, true heart: “Do yourself a favor: just go out and buy yourself the DVD. Immediately. Move!” And that’s exactly what I did.

Not so good yesterday: the fizzle-nale of Project Runway, snore.

But, all in all, yay March 8, 2006!