Today is not only the busiest day of work this month but also I want to try to get a proper blog post together & also I have to sort together an editing project & stick it in the mail & also I am terribly hungover from the gigantic glasses of Gigondas I drank at Diner w/ Sara & finally I am trying to hold it together in a world where iPods & I'm Wide Awake It's Morning can coexist. Seriously listening to that album on the train is practically impossible cos I can't concentrate on reading the paper let alone keep my quivering heart from breaking into pieces. Also, can I just call all albums records, even tho sometimes they're really CDs & mp3s or whatever? I am more comfortable with the word "record." If I'm talking about an actual record I will just say "on vinyl" so you'll know. I think I want I'm Wide Awake It's Morning on vinyl even tho I have it in other formats. I read a story in the New Yorker about a man who had the complete works of PG Wodehouse in duplicate because he wanted to be able to easily reference any one of them at a moment's notice & he lived in a 2-story house so he felt he needed the entire oeuvre on each floor. That's all of the novels plus the Golf Omnibus & everything -- hundreds of volumes I think -- twice over. The writer of the article was this man's nephew & he said that while he used to find him a bit nuts, he had reached the point where he felt his uncle's Wodehouse collection was actually not thorough enough. That's sort of how I feel about Bright Eyes these days. & I can kind of see the PG Wodehouse thing a little bit too. Not much has been going on with me. I've nearly reached the end of my awesome April calendar from Fantomas. Yesterday I was feeling frustrated & angry about a number of things & when I flipped the page to April 28 I was surprised to see that the picture looked just how I felt. I decided next time anyone felt like crossing me I'd slam both my fists super vehemently into something & be all "Eh? Fuck!" or whatever she's saying. I feel a jumbling jangle of emotions lately without any good reason. Every day is Sensitive Day. Recently I remembered these names my friend Erin & I gave each other back in high school. When we were feeling sensitive &, in particular, fat, we'd call each other by these cute fat-girl names that made us feel better. She was Tons of Fun & I was Lotsa Love. Aw. That makes me feel better already.
I am wearing a wifebeater to work today, which I am pretty sure is not allowed. We are not even allowed to say wifebeater in company publications so I am pretty sure I am not supposed to be wearing one. If anyone asks it is simply a ribbed white tank. Last nite my roomie & I sat around drinking beers & watching My Own Private Idaho, which I hadn't seen since I was way too young to see it in the first place. It was fantastic. "Where have I been?" I asked Maria. "I had no idea Gus Van Sant was gay." "I don't know that he is gay," she said. "I don't think a straight man would ever make this movie," I said. "Come to think of it, a lot of his movies seem to be about bonds between men." "That doesn't make him gay," she said. "I know," I said. "I'm not saying a straight filmmaker can't make a movie about gay people. Just not... this movie." I think this was around the time Mike was telling Scotty he loved him, & you wanted to wrap River Phoenix up in your arms & make sure no one hurt him ever again. "I mean look at the actors in this thing," I said. "They're like gay eye-candy." "True," she said. & then we googled it & it turns out everybody else in the world knew Gus Van Sant was gay all along. In other news that isn't really news, I just spent far too much money on a wallet on ebay because I suddenly felt extra-competitive when I saw I'd gotten outbid. I retaliated by offering up way too much for what, from the blurry photos, looks like a merely decent wallet. & now I shall have nothing to put in it. Sigh.
Sitting here trying to get some work done. Exhausted but happy from long weekend at home seeing family. I actually was getting work done but I am starting to feel tired & distracted. My nephew is the perfect human being. He is very affectionate & often very naughty but always full of love & he wants everyone to be together all of the time. Would you like to come back to New York with me? I asked him. YES! he said. I want to go with Tia Kat & Mommy & Papi & Grampa & Gramma. At the mall today he was hiding among the racks of clothes the way we did when we were little but he happened to be buried in a row of bright spotlessly white pants & he was very drooly & giggly & I didn't want him to make any stains so I was trying to get him out. While we were having this battle of wills (he was winning) & I was grabbing at his little arm he ducked away & hit his head hard on the metal rack. I sucked in my breath, alarmed. Antonio! I said. Are you ok? He looked at me gravely without any tears. I'm ok, he said. I eyed him for a second waiting to see if he still might cry but he didn't so we went back to battling our wills against each other's & wrangling in the racks. On the bus back I watched a DVD on my laptop, which would have felt very modern except I was watching a Charlie Chaplin movie so it wasn't quite. I also read some of an old book of poems I found in the attic by William Carlos Williams. I got to "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" & the previous owner, maybe one of my parents, had marked it here:
What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?
I can't make the spacing look right on Blogger but it is very beautiful all the same. It makes me wonder what old WCW needed to be forgiven for. Plums in the icebox, again?
Sometimes life feels like an endless series of wrong moves. Always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the right person. The real zingers, the bons mots, the choice phrases, the sparkling witticisms, always go to someone who never really deserved them anyway. If someone's not disappointing me then I'm disappointing someone. Usually someone who can't spell "disappoint." Between biting my tongue & putting my foot in my mouth there must be some kind of answer. But some people always know just what to say & how to say it; e.g., see song 3 on this list.
April is national humor & anxiety month. That's what my new CD says. I bought it on a whim cos I love Mike Patton & it came with a cute Yoshitomo Nara April calendar. I am trying to listen to it right now actually. It's... um... interesting... so far. I am just happy I finished my work for the day because there's no way I could ever edit anything with this in the background. It's like cutie-pie cartoon noises mixed with speed-metal drumming & Mike Patton's awesome voice screaming then whispering gibberish & every song is like a minute long & it is half amazing, half annoying as fuck. I never believe anyone when they say they are pausing or stopping blogging. I keep checking to see if anything is happening chez Stuart or chez Anise & it turns out that unfortunately, they are as good as their word. Happy 4/20, everyone. I can't concentrate on this post. Thank you so much, weird new CD.
On Saturday Jade came over with my new coffee table. Even tho I was terribly hungover from the Narrator show & assorted bad behavior from the nite before I was jumping up & down before the thing was even in the door. When we got it into my place we ripped off the paper & plastic & there it was, a thing of beauty in wood & laminate & paint. I could go on & on describing it or I could post a pic or 2. Here is the table in all its glory:
Here is a detail of the inlay of the axe:
Belkys told me this is Jade's very first table & his very first laminate inlay. Color me majorly impressed... & the very happy owner of an awesome table. [Thank you Polly for the pics.] In other news, I'm tired. I'm still trying to get back to normal after a long weekend of rock shows, old friends, a(nother) wedding, lots of sunshine & my new iPod. For now I have to get to work. Promise a better post someday soon, really.
Today is the day is the day is the DAY, brothers & sisters. Today I am buying myself an iPod. I've never given much of a shit one way or the other about owning an iPod (not a 3 or 4 hundred dollar shit anyway) but suddenly in the last couple of weeks something in my brain changed & now it is all I can think about. Seriously yesterday & today it is like I am doing my normal thing but my internal monologue is more or less thus:
iPod! iPod! iPod!
The persnickety copy editor in me hates it when companies get all techno about their punctuation & capitalization, as William Safire also grumbled about recently, but I love my future iPod so much that I will make an exception & honor Apple's grammatical wishes when writing about it. Which I promise to stop doing sometime soon. Today is also the day I overslept for work by no less than THREE hours. Sara & I had 2 bottles of very very expensive wine at Diner last nite, followed up by drinks on the house, compliments of the owner, & by the time I made my way home I was properly sauced & I guess I forgot to set my alarm when I went to bed. As soon as I woke up I knew I'd slept in, but when I checked the clock I was shocked to see it was 10:30. It was so ridiculous I just started laughing. My boss laughed too when I called. "Ha ha ha, you're fired," she said. Fortunately she was joking. Anyway. It's a beautiful day today. Nothing, not even the worrisome implication that my drinking is interfering with my ability to hold a job, can get me down. Tho please don't test me, universe. On the train to work I pretended to read Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour but of course what I was really thinking was iPod! iPod! iPod!
Things in the universe are strange. My favorite blogger posted a picture that looked familiar to me. I suddenly remembered I had seen it here, on the web site of my friends' band the Narrator, only the day before. I thought maybe True knew the band for some reason, but it turns out she just found the pic via google image, which is actually more mindblowingly coincidental. Then last nite things kept breaking. Leyla came by to smoke the rest of the fucked up joint that made us bug out at the Mercury on Tuesday. We knew it was weird pot but we wanted to try it again just to make sure. & we were right, it was weird. We got scary stoned & around the same time everything in my place started falling apart. The internet was being mindnumbingly slow & then cell phone reception became shittier than usual. Leyla was trying to talk to Meredith & then Dan but both times the call got dropped. I was attempting to flirt via text message but to no avail. It would say I had a message but I couldn't read it or write back or anything. The remote to the DVD player suddenly failed too, & we didn't have any more AAA batteries. I mean nothing was working. Except for the sound system in the music studio downstairs. They must have gotten some new equipment cos suddenly the bass was about thirteen times louder than usual, like someone switched on an amp in the next room. "Welcome to my house," I said to Leyla. "Everything's just a little bit harder here." At nite when I was going to bed I thought about this class I took at UT. The Search for Extraterrestrial Life. One of the approaches we talked about was listening for signals that might be coming from other life forms but not transmitting any ourselves. The main drawback to this method is that it makes possible a scenario in which "everybody's listening, no one's sending." I always remembered that for some reason. I had this image of scientists & aliens in these vast eerie labs with machines everywhere, poised, waiting, metaphorical ears cocked to an infinite silence. That's how I feel these days. Not transmitting. Poised. Waiting. Getting back silence. Maybe it's that scary pot, but last nite I scribbled to myself in my notebook so I could get something back. & on one of the pages I saw a quotation I had copied there years ago: "However deep one's knowledge of abstruse philosophy, it is like a piece of hair flying in the vastness of space."
Mike wants me to update my blog. I don't have that much to say, so I thought I'd at least put up a cute picture of Phoebe Cates. For some reason it feels like a Phoebe Cates kind of morning, so I google imaged her. I highly recommend google imaging Phoebe Cates. There are about 8 million pictures of her in a bikini for some reason. Secondly, this funny Japanese rendition of her made me laugh. Thirdly, hopefully putting up a giant picture will make my paltry post look longer.
So. Last nite was apparently cute band nite at the Mercury. It was my friends The Narrator from Chicago, local hotties The End of the World & these 5 girls from Canada called Pony Up. Leyla & I were broke & drinking PBRs which weren't getting us drunk, until suddenly they did. The next thing I knew Leyla had disappeared with the bass player from TEOTW & I was gushing to Stefan about what a beautiful voice he had & then Joe showed up after all the bands were done playing & Leyla came back with a joint from somewhere. It was some sort of weird pot that made us bug out a bit so after that we sped off in a taxi & around 1 I was falling into bed.
I'm finding it difficult to concentrate this week. This blog feels very perfunctory. I am going back to thinking about which iPod I am going to buy myself. & possibly doing some work; we'll see.
We went away for a wedding, tho technically we missed the wedding. We spent the ceremony itself in the rental car trying unsuccessfully to find the Florida Yacht Club in time. When we finally got there we swerved up on a patch of grass & parked there. I brushed the sand off my still-beachy feet & slid on my highest heels. We rushed out of the car smoothing our skirts & our hair, putting on our best formal faces tho we felt very worried & frantic, but it was all to no avail; when we got in the door guests were milling around talking & a long line had already formed at the bar & they told us it was already over. All the same we got to spend some great time celebrating with our friends & of course the happy couple. I have to admit I felt teary & proud & wistful all at once at the reception watching M. & P. dance with each other, & then afterwards with their parents. Paul was beaming & so happy but he was still the same old Paul. For awhile he stood over by the bar with Morgan & Brad & me where we were sipping scotches & being the sarcastic New Yorkers in the corner laughing at the woman with the top-hatted poodle in her purse & wincing at the music. "This is the one song I specifically asked them not to play," he said resignedly when the wedding band did "Brick House." But apparently the bridesmaids had begged for it. The one thing that would have made the weekend better (besides making it to the ceremony) was if I had brought my pot with me. The only person who sympathized with me about that was Ashley. She looked very L Word in her sharp white suit & rhinestone-dotted shirt & we stood outside the reception smoking cigarettes lamenting how stupidly responsible we had been to leave our bags at home. But by then it was Saturday nite. “If we’d brought it,” Ashley sighed, “we would have smoked it already anyway.” So. Jacksonville. Actionville, we called it on Friday, because we had a bizarre meth-head Republican bartender at the Radisson with an askew bowtie & an orange tan, & because we saw a guy getting led out of the hotel in handcuffs & another guy being taken out on a stretcher, & because we went swimming at midnite even tho the pool was closed & the water was cold & we were very drunk indeed. We were obsessed with swimming all weekend long & I couldn’t get this song, from the CD Anise gave me for my birthday, out of my head. But by today, when the thrill of eating cheese grits & looking at palm trees & paying slightly lower prices for things was utterly gone, I was happy to turn in our slightly dented & scratched rental car & get on the plane. The weather is practically as nice in Brooklyn at the moment & there aren’t any leering orange bartenders named Ron & anyway my pot is here & the Simpsons is almost on.
The best thing about my birthday cake was there were two pieces of beef jerky in it. Sheri's the cake-inventing guru & she knows I don't give a shit about cake but I adore beef jerky, so she stuck two pre-wrapped sticks of it right in the frosting. I blew out the candles, ate both pieces of jerky & went outside for a cigarette. So I'm 27. Yeah, yeah. Everything happens in fits & starts, everything. Days & days of unremitting boredom & then like five big things will happen. Sometimes all in one nite. My birthday was fun. Lots of friends & some great presents. Somehow I changed clothes four times in the course of the evening too. Because Polly got me this dress that was this long soft twisted grey thing & you couldn't tell which end was up or what was back & what was front or how you were meant to wear it at all, so as soon as I got home from the bar, even tho I had about six people with me, I put it on straightaway. Anise said it looked like I was from Tokyo (meaning the dress rules). Then I wanted to show Sheri the black dress I bought for Paul's wedding, but while I was wearing it I sat where someone had spilled beer on the couch & so finally I put on a t-shirt & jeans. Which was best, really. Anyway. Blah blah. New York is sunshiney now, but everyone knows that. Yesterday I walked downtown from work & I just kept walking, over the bridge & into Brooklyn. It didn't feel so much like I was walking as it felt like I was feeling the sun & the new air & checking out the graffiti. I liked a car parked below me on South Fifth when I was almost home; someone had sprayed the words "COME ON LETS GO" in giant yellow letters across the side. Seemed appropriate.
Tonite when I went out I had at least six bobby pins in my hair but just now when I took them out there were only two. I'm not sure what happened to the others; it's a mystery. Tonite there were kisses in the hallway. & we laughed. It's the end of a thrilling weekend that was cruelly cut one hour short. On the way home today after Anise's going-away party on the UES -- a long journey from the UES -- I kept meeting people. First on the 4 train a guy who was playing Tetris & said very quietly as tho he were testing me to see if I would respond or not: "You're the kind of white girl I like." On a bad day I would have rolled my eyes & looked away but I smiled at him & told him I loved Tetris. I said, when you need a long piece more than anything does it know & on purpose not give you a long piece? "I don't know," he said, "but it always feels like it." His name was Richard. Then at Union Square I got into conversation with Mark, who drums with his hands instead of drumsticks. We started talking because we were openly staring at a minor altercation that had developed between an Asian guy selling bootleg DVDs & a white guy with a messenger bag who wanted to know if the guy had a permit to sell them. We couldn't tell if the second guy was a narc or a concerned, anal-retentive citizen, but later we saw him talking to a cop about the whole thing so we decided he was just a shit either way. On the train I read some of the journals of Keith Haring, which I'm supposed to mail back to Anise when I'm finished, at her future address in San Francisco. Anise sang San Francisico tonite, the Judy Garland one, & she was doing these great showgirl chorus-line kicks & I nearly started crying but it was too much fun to cry. We also did B-Boy Bouillabaise & Three-Minute Rule & Where Is My Mind? & there was a lot of Loudon Wainwright. Just a great weekend. Sat. nite went to a party w/ Belkys that was mostly transgendered people she knows from her internship. The pronoun thing is confusing but they were the most charming, happy, affectionate wonderful group of people. Got so drunk, whiskey @ end of nite, Makers, then B. & I ended up in Brooklyn later with round little glasses filled up with Jamesons & she told me her & Jade were making me a coffee table for my birthday & there was this drunk asshole next to us trying to butt into our conversation but we were not having it. The time change is fucking me up!! It means now is bedtime. I'm going to work one hour late tomorrow in rebellion.
It’s really insane the way the rain is coming down. In sheets. Hitting the roof making these pulsing concentric circles of water. I have to go & look at it again to believe it. The rain is coming down very hard & the wind is skimming it off the surface of the roof as it hits. The roof is all bumpy & great pools are forming in it. When I open the window it is warm but there is so much water. The building across the street is shrouded in fog. It is very annoying in this apartment where there is only one window; really a pair of them, side by side; so that when I want to look out it I actually have to get up from the desk. I’m sitting here listening to Vespertine & smoking cigarettes. My ashtray is so overflowing with cigarettes that I just accidentally took a drag of one of the put-out ones. Gross. Mitch Hedberg died, devastating news. He was so mind-blowingly funny in his own strange & perfect way. Mike put up some quotes from him on his blog & I put this one in the comments: I opened up a yogurt and underneath the lid it said, "Please try again." Because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me... "Come on Mitchell, don't give up!" An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.
The weather this morning said: Fog. It also said: 44 degrees. It said: Feels like 41 degrees. I woke up with a crushing hangover, which maybe explains why I thought it would be ok to wear jeans today. I am not allowed to wear jeans to work, even on Fridays. But this morning I put on a clean black pair with a black sweater & I decided no one would notice. But when I stepped outside even in the fog it was quite plain to see that I was wearing jeans. So I went back upstairs to change; just a waste of time.
I developed my crushing hangover getting way too drunk with Mike Toole last nite at this that & the other place. I am not sure how it happened but somehow after drinks Mike came over for a bit & he left a bar of soap with a deer on it at my place. This morning as I was rushing around putting on clothes entirely inappropriate for work & looking for my cell phone, which it turned out is missing, I noticed the soap sitting on my "coffee table," which is really just a plastic storage container with a hideous velvet blanket on it. So I'm hoping that Mike has my phone? Like he meant to get his fancy-pants deer soap but grabbed my cellie instead? Mike? Say it's so?
Mike wants me to update my blog. I don't have that much to say, so I thought I'd at least put up a cute picture of Phoebe Cates. For some reason it feels like a Phoebe Cates kind of morning, so I google imaged her. I highly recommend google imaging Phoebe Cates. There are about 8 million pictures of her in a bikini for some reason. Secondly, this funny Japanese rendition of her made me laugh. Thirdly, hopefully putting up a giant picture will make my paltry post look longer.
