Well, my design for the GSLIS t-shirt contest didn't win this year, but that's all for the good, because now I can make the shirts available in my own store that much sooner! So go give them a look.


Last night I went with some friends to see Wong Kar Wai's 2046 at the Art. I didn't have a chance to watch B's copy of In the Mood for Love first, so I'll reserve my thoughts until I've seen the earlier half of the story, but the acting was all first rate.

Tonight is Clue and gingerbread and pie. Doesn't get much better than that. (The pie is somewhat of an experiment. I added too much flour to one of my regular pies, making the inside solid instead of juicy. Still smells good, though. Will report back later with results.)

Halloween turned out to be a bit of a bust this year. Friday, of course, was the Chicago car-towing debacle, and then I never ended up getting the address for the party that was happening Saturday. But by that point I wasn't in my usual festive mood anyway. We may dress up tomorrow night at the Witch n' Bitch knit and crochet night at K's house, though. If we do, I'll be sure to post pictures.

Hi there.

Right.

Ok, so...

Have I ever told you about the October Curse?

S, C, and I went up after work last night to see the Dar Williams show, which, in one of the night's few saving graces, turned out to be lovely. The downside? My car was towed and while waiting to pick it up we had a little encounter that got kind of scary to say the least.

We parked in the same lot that C and I had used last time we went to this theater, went and had some Thai before the concert, and when we came back to go into the theater my car was missing. It was then that we saw the sign (half covered by vines) that parking in the lot was no longer allowed. So since there was no sense in missing the concert we had come all this way to see, we went on into the Vic. Besides the people in front of us who had waaaay too much beer and could not sit still, it was a great concert... at least when I could stop thinking about poor little Claudia Jean (that's my car) sitting in some impound lot somewhere.

After the show we got a taxi to take us way up Clark street to a pretty scary neighborhood where we found the towing company and a few other women who had had their cars towed from the lot near the Vic. The guy behind the glass was completely ignoring us while he talked on the phone. Then he finally helped the two groups in front of us and disappeared again, leaving the three of us girls standing alone on the sidewalk in front of this sketchy place.

That was when things got scary. As we were standing there alone a man came up and started doing the usual creepy-guy-on-the-street chatting thing. He sounded kind of like Fenster from The Usual Suspects, but said that his English was so bad because he was Polish. He then proceeded to muscle his way past S and C until he was standing in the vestibule of the towing company, right next to me. He asked my name and when I told him I wasn't going to tell him he got all huffy and started singing "American Woman, get away from me..." Then he started saying that all he needed was someone to break a twenty. I was terrified that the night was going to end on a much worse note, with him taking my wallet and all of my ID and leaving us with no way to get my car back. The man inside the towing company didn't even glance our way once while he was talking on the phone. I'm pretty sure I could have screamed and he would have kept talking. So I started cursing the Polish guy out ("Get the fuck away from me," and so on.), hoping that if we made ourselves seem less like easy targets he would give up and go away. He finally took off when S pulled out her cell phone and said she was going to call the police. When I woke up this morning I was still shaking and had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Nothing happened to us, and he may have just been after change for a twenty like he said, but we were in a situation where anything could have happened and there wouldn't have been anyone to help us. Certainly not the man who made us wait on the sidewalk for a full twenty minutes while he talked on the phone and did something with spreadsheets and terminal windows on his computer. He's probably an Internet spammer. What else could you do with such a small, twisted, shriveled soul?

When the man finally came to the window to take my $150(!) he let us in to the back where the cars were, and then went back to his telephone and made the next group of people (who had showed up just after creepy guy left) wait even longer. Someone in line speculated that he was trying to make people wait until after midnight so he could charge them for an extra day's storage. (It was 11:15 at this point.) Claudia Jean was blocked in behind two other cars, so we had to go hunt down the guy with the tow truck in the lot to move them for us, which took probably another 10 minutes or so. Then we were finally free.

The rest of the night was just Chicago's usual hair-raising traffic. It took us more than an hour to get as far as the start of I-57. They had cones out on 94 for some mysterious invisible construction that narrowed the highway down to one lane. So it was about 2:45 in the morning by the time we made it back to Champaign. I'm guessing I must have been going on pure adrenaline, because I don't know how I managed to handle last night and make the drive back. I've never been so glad to see my bed.

So what does all of this have to do with the curse I mentioned at the start? Well, this is the second year in a row that S and I have had Octobers that were so miserable that we found ourselves praying for November to roll around. To tell the truth, I had forgotten about last year's curse and just thought my terrible month so far had been random chance. Until last night, when the month was drawing to a close in such a spectacularly bad way. (Although S had the worst experience this month by far. Yes, worse than getting your car towed and almost getting mugged. Far far worse.)

We bemoaned the curse and wondered what we ever did to October that it hates us so. Then, about halfway through the drive back, it hit me. The only possible explanation! What good thing has happened the last two Octobers? Two baseball teams that fans thought would never ever ever win the Series... did. Years of pent-up bad luck suddenly turned to good. But all things need balance, so where did all that bad luck go? I propose that it redistributed itself to individuals all around the country, forcing us to suffer horrible Octobers, all to balance out the luck in the world.

If the Cubs ever win the pennant, frankly, I'll be lucky to make it out of October alive.

Hold me.

Ah. There is now some doubt about whether the version of Tom T. Hall's I Love that I listened to as a child actually had the bit about "bourbon in a glass and grass". I can't find an MP3 of the version that was on Songs of Fox Hollow, but the version I just listened to from Country Songs for Children, has some different lyrics about "old tv shows, and snow". Now the question is, did I just hear the more adult version later on in life and think that I first heard those lyrics as a kid? Man, I'm going to have to ask my Mom what happened to that album when I go home for Christmas. I think she might have brought it home after Grandma died a few years ago. More research is required.

Doing a bit of thinking lately about these wacky online journals we all keep lately, and what it means. First, there are my blogging rules:

1. I never write anything about the companies I work for. (Other than, possibly, something like, "Gah. Today at work was insane." Note: Today at work will probably not be insane. Last Friday, on the other hand? So much insanity.) I may mention something funny said by someone I work with, but I would only post it using rule #2...
2. I don't use my friends' real names in the blog, unless they have blogs of their own. Those that do have blogs are obviously ok with their names being out there on the Internet, but I don't feel it's my place to make that choice for anyone else. Right now I use initials. Because that makes for annoying reading sometimes, I'm thinking about switching to nicknames. Can I call you Spanky?
   
3. While I may, from time to time, write a blog entry mostly because I hope a certain person will read it (this happens most often with guys I am dating, thinking about dating, or have dated) I am even more careful about protecting the identity of those persons. Which is why I won't be linking to the lyrics of a Joni Mitchell song I find very apropos lately. ;)
   

So I guess that's it. My triumverate of rules. Few, but important.

Now, as far as whether I'm the same person online as I am off? For the most part, I think they're pretty similar. I won't say anything on my website or in email that I wouldn't say to someone in person, but I do find it easier to "say" things in type sometimes. For example, if you know me in real life, you've probably been shocked if I use the word fuck, because I use it so sparingly. (Good profanity has more impact if it's doled out in small doses!) And yet, in an email yesterday to I want all hot tubs cold, I used the sentence, "How the fuck are you, cocksucker?" Those words are in there ("there" being my brain), they just don't come out that often in my spoken conversation.

I sent another email yesterday asking someone a question I may or may not have ever gotten around to asking in person. When I can have the shield of the computer screen it makes those things just a little bit easier to say. And if there's one thing I've learned in the past few years, it's always better to take a chance than to regret the chance you didn't take. Every time I open myself up and speak what's in my heart I find that I grow by the experience. And if I still sometimes have to open myself up in type rather than in person, well, it's better than never saying anything at all.

So, anyway, what you read is pretty much what you get. Welcome to my head.

Boy, that last post was scintillating, wasn't it? I should have thrown in some even more exciting topics like, "This weather sure is cold today, eh?" or, "Gosh, I wonder if the Sox will win the Series?"

Whatever. This one is probably going to be just as disjointed, if not more so. But if Sars can do it once in awhile, so can I.

Anyway, today's post also starts out with a little bit about movies, or television, at least. Last night I watched the Masterpiece Theater Sherlock Holmes story (thanks to my Dad reminding me it was on so I could TiFaux it.) I can't say I was totally won over by Rupert Everett's performance as Holmes, but I thought that Ian Hart did the best Watson I've seen in a long time. Can't say I loved his plot-device American fiance, though. And shouldn't Holmes and Watson have been played by older actors if this was supposed to be taking place in 1903? I did think it was interesting that yet another author (Carole Nelson Douglas is the first that I can think of) decided that some interesting dramatic mileage could be gotten from having Holmes read Baron von Kraft-Ebbing's Psychopathia Sexualis. I guess it's fertile imaginative ground to pit Holmes against lust murderers and fetishists, since he was contemporaneous with the Ripper murders. I suspect Conan Doyle would have been appalled.

Speaking of perversion (oh, I kid, y'all) I've gotten back in touch lately with a few of my friends from "NYC medical website job". It's reminded me of the time our entire department took a field trip to Philadelphia to see the Mutter Museum. Truly the best museum of all time! Where else can you see the world's largest colon? And now I can't remember if "summer complaint" was an actual disease listed in one of their exhibits about turn of the century medicine, or one of Grandpa's ailments on The Simpsons. I do remember that it was Grandpa who complained of "skin failure".

Ok, this is totally unrelated to anything, but one of the songs my Yahoo Music keeps serving up is Whatever Happened to Julie off of an album called The Bluegrass Storyteller by James King. Basically, the story told in the song is how the singer once loved a girl named Julie. Then one day Julie disappears, and he spends the next twenty years trying to find out what happened to her. One day he gets a call from a young woman who tells him that she has an explanation that will "ease all [his] pain". Well, it seems she could have chosen her words better, because the explanation that she gives upon her arrival in town is that she's "what happened to Julie. She died on the day I was born." Um, how is that supposed to ease his pain, exactly? Of course, when I did a Google search for the lyrics, I stumbled across the page linked above, and it says that the song was originally written by Tom T. Hall. I had a completely ambivalent relationship with Tom T. Hall as a child. My Grandma had one of his records that I used to listen to over and over again. His songs are damn catchy. But also kind of disturbing in a way I still can't put my finger on. The record also came with an insert that had illustrations of each of the songs, and maybe that was what gave me the creeps. I haven't been able to find a picture of the inside illustrations, but here's the album cover. You'll just have to trust me that the inside pictures were weird, at least to 7 year old me. Anyway, Tom T. Hall is the master of fucked-up lyrics. You have to give props of some sort to a guy who could sing a lyric like "I love bourbon in a glass, and grass," on a kids album and not have it twig either my Gandma or my Mom's radar of what's appropriate for children. (To give you an example of how strict my Mom was about language, she chewed me out in a car full of girls from my Scout troop once because I said something "sucked".) I'm 99% sure, though, that at the time I thought he meant he liked grass that grows on your lawn. And I don't think I knew what bourbon was at that age.

Got to decide what I'm going to wear for Halloween parties I'm going to this weekend. Halloween is my favoritest holiday ever. All I know is the costume is going to let me play with a lot of my fake blood. Especially since last year I figured out which fake blood is better for fabric and which is better on skin.

My Amazon order came in the mail on Friday, and I'm now the proud owner of the DVD of Clue. Possibly the best unsuccessful movie ever. I remember when it came out in the theaters (although I never saw it till it was on video), and it absolutely bombed. I don't know if people were pissed that you'd have to see it three times to see all the different endings, or what. The DVD takes care of that problem nicely by putting all three endings together at the end, one right after the other. In fact, the multiple endings are probably my favorite part of the movie. By the time you see Tim Curry and crew counting the bullets that have been fired for the third time, you're counting along with them. "One, plus two, plus one, plus one..."

And remember one of the most important lessons: "monkey's brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington D.C.!"

I also saw Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle for the first time this weekend. It was pretty much as funny as people had told me it would be. I liked it. And of course Neil Patrick Harris' Being John Malkovich-style role was my favorite. Who doesn't love Doogie Howser, even when he's coked up and stealing your car?

Other weekend activities involved eating breakfast food and pie with S and B Friday night, although a miscommunication with BB led me to miss the Green Mountain Grass farewell show at the Post. Ah well. I also got to talk to KM on the phone Sunday night. It sounds like she's settling in nicely out in The People's Republic of Santa Monica. Hi, K!

Last night I went to see Me and You and Everyone We Know on its last night at the Art. I came away from it feeling like I had been in someone's dream, where things don't have to make sense, but where they connect with a kind of beauty. The two boys chatting online with a stranger about "back and forth. forever," had the entire theater absolutely rolling in the aisles. And there were a few scenes so sweet I cried, but in a mostly happy way, if that makes any sense. Most movies that provoke tears leave you feeling emotionally drained, but these scenes managed to uplift instead. Like the two girls running down the street, free and innocent for what is surely almost the last time. Or Peter and Sylvie lost in a dream world of kitchen utensils and perfect families. Or Christine, feeling she's lost a chance at potential happiness, pounding the steering wheel in tears as she cries, "fuck life, fuck children, fuck peace!!"

This movie was sweet, and funny, and beautiful, in its own scattered way.

...the question keeps running through my head. "Who was in charge of picking music for the soundtrack of Just Like Heaven?" How could they have missed Little Ghost? Someone was really falling down on the job.

Oooh, shoulder is still a little stiff today, in spite of putting a heating pad on it last night before I went to sleep. Maybe I should use this as an excuse to go get a massage.

Had a weird, extra-long dream last night where I was hanging out with the guy things recently ended with and just talking and talking about all sorts of stuff like we were best friends. Don't know what that means, really. I suppose I miss talking to him and wonder if he's missing talking to me too.

The wine tasting at Krannert last night was fun. S and B went with me, which meant we got to try about twice as many wines as we would have otherwise, because we got different things and swapped glasses for sips of the other's wines. I didn't find anything that I really loved, but there were some good ones that I'd probably buy. And I learned a valuable lesson: when you see a table labeled Wines of Missouri and think, "Wines of Missouri? That can't be good," you'd be right. (My note next to their wines on my note page? ICK! Pretty much says it all, I think.) I also reminded myself that I don't like sherry at all. I gave it another try after hating it last year, because I never want to be one of those people that will reject an entire category of things out of hand after only trying it once. Last year I had a cream sherry, which was super-ick. (Not a fan of the sweet wines unless they're moscato.) This year I tried an amontillado, which was much drier, and so slightly easier to drink, but still... ick. My favorite table was Bonny Doon. They have pretty consistently good wines, and even had the one I took to the recent Dinner Club meeting.

After the wining, we went over to the Bread Company and split some fondue. I also tried the mussel appetizer, which was yummy, but had a few too many bits of sand still left on the mussels to make it entirely pleasant. After the food we were all exhausted and headed home. I think I was in bed by ten or so at the latest. Even Pledged, the book about sororities that I've been reading lately, couldn't keep me awake.

Today while I'm working I'm going to check out some of the bands mentioned in this recent Ask Metafilter thread: What CD are you currently in love with. I'll start with things recommended by other people who love The Mountain Goats. My friend D turned me on to a side project of John Darnielle's called The Extra Glenns, so I have to see if I can find a copy of that too.

Edited to add: Oooh! Just checked Yahoo Music Unlimited and they have the album! Awesome.

So at the end of the month a couple of friends and I are going to drive up to Chicago to hear Dar Williams in concert. (Which is going to be excellent, except for that whole drive-back-to-Champaign-after-the-concert thing. I'm providing sharp sticks for my passengers to poke me with to keep me awake.) Anyway, I've been listening to the new album, and the lyrics to one of the songs just got my attention today:

I tried again, I went last night
Another date was just not right
And as I drove myself back home
A little voice said "just be alone"
But sometimes I think I see you in a crowd
It's not picture perfect
You're just meant for me somehow

And I'll miss you till I meet you
I'll miss you till I meet you
I miss you all the time

I love the world just as it is
And I won't lose my faith in it
But there are days I think of you
Saying "Hey, that's beautiful,
Yeah, I see it too"
It all goes by so fast, like waving hands
You want to capture things
Find some one who understands

-Dar Williams, "Miss You Till I Meet You"

That's the feeling. That you love your life the way it is, but that you can see the beauty of meeting the right person, too. So you'll miss him till you meet him.

Would it be wrong of me to get a broom and go all Klepforth on my upstairs neighbor? I don't know what this girl does in the morning, but it apparently involves dropping bowling balls on the floor right above my bed. It's almost a plus because I don't have to set my alarm clock anymore, but the bad part is that she always gets up about 30-45 minutes before I usually would. (And that's early, y'all. She's thumping and slamming around up there at 6:45 AM.) A guy and his dog used to live up there and they didn't make half as much noise as this chick does. One of these mornings I'm just going to have to catch her as she leaves the building and say something to her. As yet it's unclear if she's the same person who owns the car parked next to mine, who seems to find it impossible to park in her space correctly.

In other news, I woke up with a wicked crick in my neck this morning. Obviously today is not my day.

Quite a nice weekend, all considered. Saturday night S and I went out to Alto Vineyards to sip some wine and listen to some music. The first made the fact that it was slightly too chilly outside for the second bearable. Ran into quite a few people that we knew. Does this mean I've been living here too long, or just long enough? I know I'll miss that sense of community whenever I leave, whether that's this winter or next summer.

Sunday I put up a few of my craft projects for sale on Etsy, and went to the store to get the materials for some scarves that I want to start working on. Couldn't resist buying some new yarn either.

To jump start my brain this week I'm going to use a meme I got from Ashlee's site.

7 Things I Plan To Do:

1. Buy a better bicycle, and start riding it for at least 10 mile rides on a regular basis. (This will probably have to wait until after the winter.)
   
2. Go to Italy on my next vacation.
3. Hurry up with that Italy vacation, because in winter of 2006 I want to go with my parents to Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia.
4. Grow my hair till it's long enough for Locks of Love.
5. Find boyfriend who recognizes that I'm the most special snowflake of winter. Cause I totally am. Heh.
   
6. Learn to drive stick.
7. Teach myself to play guitar.
   

7 Things I Can Do:

1. Make kick-ass Halloween costumes.
2. Recite the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in proper Middle English.
3. Strip and refinish a piece of furniture.
4. Bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy. And also a blueberry-rhubarb one.
   
5. Kiss really well. (Or so I've been told.) ;)
6. Know if I'm facing uptown, downtown, east, or west when I come out of any given subway stop. (Offer void in Brooklyn.)
   
7. Make you laugh.
   

7 Things I Can't Do:

1. Eat a habanero pepper.
2. Watch someone shoot up drugs in a movie. (See #2 below.)
3. Make that taxi-calling whistle.
4. Spit with enough aim to hit something, like an old-time movie cowboy could.
5. Fake liking someone when I don't.
6. A headstand.
7. Dunk a basketball.
   

7 Things That Scare Me:

1. Cockroaches/waterbugs. Especially the ones that fly!! (And ask me sometime about why I'll never ever ever wear big, fluffy bunny slippers again.)
2. Needles. (Like for shots or drawing blood. Not for sewing.)
3. Getting out of my car and going into my house alone in the dark when I've just seen a scary movie and there are weird noises coming from the neighbors'.
4. Smallpox.
5. That Metallica video where the guy can't speak or write and is trying to communicate "please kill me" through blinking. Shudder.
   
6. Heights. More precisely, the idea of falling or jumping from them.
   
7. Anyone talking in that Skeksis voice from The Dark Crystal.
   

7 Random Facts About Me:

1. By the time I was 21 days old I had already travelled from Alaska to Saudi Arabia.
2. I have one tattoo, so far.
3. I want to kiss someone while lying on a blanket looking up at the stars.
4. I've never ridden a motorcycle, broken a bone, or been stung by a bee.
5. I built this city on rock n' roll.
6. My name anagrams to spell "moldy on all".
7. I still want to be a special guest star on the Muppet Show when I grow up.
   

7 Things I Say The Most:

1. Awesome!
2. It's totally _____.
   
3. Yay!
4. Eeeeexcellent.
5. Cool.
6. I don't know if you're interested in _____, but if you are give me a call.
7. Ha!
   

Well, the week is ending much more auspiciously than it began. Everything after the Mountain Goats show on Wednesday was pretty awesome. I wrote John Darnielle a thank you email for the incredible concert, and he wrote back. Swoon! I totally have a new musician-crush now. Plus Josh from The Comics Crumudgeon left a comment on my Mountain Goats post, and that's super-cool. Plus I actually got an email from somone at GSLIS who bought one of my Gin and Tonic t-shirts way back in the day. Makes me feel like I'm actually making progress with this whole web thing.

Then Thursday night I met up with EK for a couple of beers and we talked non-stop for about two and a half hours. Yay for reconnecting with cool people!

Last night was the latest edition of Dinner Club: Dinner Club Italian, and it was delicious. BL fixed gnocchi (only the best food EVAR!) and homemade pesto, H and S whipped up a truly decadent tiramisu, BB made her yummy salad with avocados, and I brought the appetizer: rounds of bread with mozzarella, basil, and tomato. Much wine, and scotch, and limoncello flowed, and we got to hear the story about S, the baby oil, the speedo, and the birthday cake again, which is one of my favorites. With practice, we've gotten much better about not fixing so much food that we have an entire second meal left over, plus it helps to invite extra friends, and we had a few of those there last night as well. Miss R., we were thinking of you and raised a glass.

Cheers!

I love this perfectly cromulent list of made-up words in The Simpsons.

Yoink!

Well, my first solo concert-going experience was a success. The Mountain Goats were amazing. The only thing that disappointed me was how incredibly short their set was. They barely played for as long as one of the bands that opened for them.

After work I went out with a few people to grab a beer during logo glass night at Murphys. Had a nice Sam Adams Octoberfest, and got to keep the glass. Now it can keep my Guinness one company in the cabinet. If they start reproducing, though, I'm out of here.

That kept me busy until about 7:30, when I went home and read for a couple of hours before I got ready to go over to the Canopy Club. The bands were supposed to start at 9, but I knew there were two openers, so I got there around 10:15, which was about right because the second band, The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers, had just gone on. I got a rum and Diet Coke from the bar. I needed the Diet Coke to keep me awake (Shut up! I'm old.) and (it turned out) the rum to deaden the awfullness of The Prayers and Tears, etc. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud at the one guy emphatically bobbing his head to the droning shoegazer rock. (I don't know, maybe they were good, but they were just really not my thing.) The area in front of the stage was pretty well packed, but I think it was mostly with people doing the same thing I was, angling for the best spot for when John Darnielle and Peter Hughes came on stage. I managed, by dint of stepping into spots left empty and edging sideways a few times to work my way to within about half a person of the stage. (There was almost room to my left to step right up to the stage, but it was too narrow, so I ended up standing partly behind the tall-ish bearded guy who wound up with the set list at the end of the night. It was close enough to see really well and to make eye contact a few times, which was cool, since I usually tend to hang back at shows.)

When The Mountain Goats came on stage they started with a few songs from The Sunset Tree, and I have to say that John Darnielle really seems to take such joy in being on stage. It was really infectious, and I kept finding myself grinning. He kind of comes across as the coolest science or math teacher you ever had in high school. The enthusiasm for his subject just spills over onto everyone around him. You can kind of see what I'm talking about here in the video for This Year, but just imagine more smiling, since in concert they weren't trying to convey "forced to sing by machete-wielding teenagers."

They did a lot of songs from older albums, and now I've added Sweden and Full Force Galesburg to the list of albums I have to own. I've heard few things that remind me as forcefully of my own first love as the lyrics to Twin Human Highway Flares.

on the day that i become so forgetful
that all of this melts away
i will burn all the calanders that counted the years down
to such a worthless day

No songs from All Hail West Texas, unfortunately. I thought about yelling out a request for one, but I couldn't decide which to ask for. Plus I'm too shy. Plus plus I think those people that yell out requests are kind of jerks. Anyway, they wrapped up with a few more songs from The Sunset Tree and then finished by midnight. Midnight!! They only went on stage at 11! I could have listened to them for at least as long again. Oh well. Hopefully wherever I'm living next year, whether it's here or somewhere else I'll be able to do this again.

Tonight The Mountain Goats play at the Canopy Club. This will be the first concert I've ever gone to totally by myself (although J might be doing sound), but I'm really looking forward to it. I think I have a thing for musicians with slightly weird, nasal singing voices: TMG's John Darnielle, Dan Bern, Tom Petty, John Prine. They're all artists whose voices you can either love or hate. I do wish the show didn't start so late, though. It starts at 9 and there are two opening bands. Maybe I'd better have another Diet Coke.

I'm still pissed that the need to avoid the boy caused me to not go to the Sleater-Kinney show this weekend. Grumble.

Yesterday I was hit with a fit of inspiration and submitted a design for the GSLIS t-shirt contest that I'm pretty sure will win. (You know how sometimes you're just in the zone? I think I like this one better than either of my two previous winning designs.) And even if it doesn't, I think it's one that could do well in my store.

there's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet
no matter where you live.
there'll always be a few things, maybe several things
that you're going to find really difficult to forgive.

-The Mountain Goats, "Up the Wolves"

Ok, a friend just sent me his take on things, and this really gave me some insight into why my feelings and the end result were so at odds:

So what you have here (and what makes it so painful) is a guy who knows all the symbols of an emotionally accessible man (cooking you dinner, taking you out without pressuring you, being attentive without a clear ulterior motive) and can therefore playact that man without actually being that man. So that you're left feeling great about him and falling harder and faster than you want to, without him actually having to *be* what he's presenting. And you're left having been entirely emotionally genuine with a guy who gave all appearances of returning that same emotion just as genuinely--while his emotion was actually elsewhere.

That seems about right.

And now I'm done. Done with thinking about this and done with writing about this.

So as you can imagine much to my surprise
When the door was flung back open wide
It was a miracle
She walked inside
And pulled her chair up next to me

And that's when she knew
She had made her
First mistake

-Lyle Lovett

Had a bit of a talk with the aforementioned boy yesterday, and things are no clearer than they were before. Except now, instead of being sad, I am clearly annoyed. Frankly, I'm beyond done with hearing "it's complicated" when he can apparently talk to other people about what that complicatedness consists of, and yet he can't do me the courtesy of explaining himself. So now that he's violated one of my most sacred relationship rules-- respect the other person, I really am just pissed off. I suppose it'll make things easier to deal with, being mad instead of sad, but it's too bad that he had to ruin the way I thought of him and become just another jerk. If he ever chooses to explain exactly what the hell was going on here, maybe I'll be able to revise that opinion, but right now it's not looking good.

On the plus side of all of this, something tangentially related to this boy did cause me to get back in touch with my friend EK, and he and I are going to meet for drinks tomorrow and catch up. Excellent silver lining there, cloud!

Things that have made me laugh in an otherwise rotten week:

1. My friends.
2. The mental image of EK breakdancing around his apartment in pleather chaps.
3. Incomplete two-word sentences with which to end your life. ("Your holiness!")
4. The End of the World.
5. This Nike commercial.

You know how one of the best feelings in the world is that very beginning of something where the potential is unlimited and you look at a guy and you think, "cute," and then you think, "funny," and then you think, "smart," and then you think, "sweet," and then, "kind," and then, "good kisser... great in bed," then "oh my God, my friends like him." And then...

He calls you and says it was all a mistake. That there's not enough of those things in you for him. Or he doesn't say that, but that's what you hear. "Not cute. Not funny. Not enough. Not her."

And you wonder how you got out here on this limb. So far alone, and falling. Right back down in it.

This is taken from my post to the GSLIS movie discussion board:

I finally got to see this last night on its last night at the Art. I really liked it. The weird ending kind of seemed to fit somehow. Once Don left on his trip it seemed like he was in a world where every young man could be his son... the boy at the car rental, the sandwich kid, the guy in the car (who had the same tracksuit jacket as sandwich guy's, which was very similar to Don's.)

Does anyone else think Don and all of the rest might have been figments of Winston's imagination? They mentioned several times that Winston loves to read mysteries. Maybe he was writing one. That would explain the coincidence of the dog named Winston, the way everything goes black at the end of each "chapter" (especially the end, because Winston had just gone back home to work on figuring out the "ending"), the way Winston really seems to control what Don does, and, of course, little Lolita, lifted right out of Nabokov.

I don't know, it seemed like a possibility that would kind of pull together some of the stuff that was going on. Regardless, I liked it for its tiny character studies. There wasn't a lot of background and explanation as he met each of the women. Just a little slice of their daily life, conveyed with subtle facial expressions. My favorites were the way he and Frances Conroy's character looked at each other after her husband left the table, and the look that Jessica Lange's character gave her secretary when they were talking beside the car. Talk about a look conveying volumes!

Definitely gave me more to ponder about than any movie has since, I don't know, maybe the end of Lost in Translation. Bill Murray, thespian. Who knew?

Honestly, you'd think I'd know better by now. Note to self: drinking Diet Coke, or any other caffeinated beverage, while it may give temporary energy and focus, will also result in jittery hands that have a hard time typing. So it's really a wash, productivity-wise.

Going to see the Bill Murray movie, Broken Flowers, tonight. Hope it's good!

Nicholas Cage descends further into the crazy and the pompous by saddling his newborn son with the name Kal-El.

Oh Raising Arizona-era Nick, we hardly knew ye. Remember how back then you were an enjoyable actor? We're starting to forget.

Last night I went to see the Fluffgirl Burlesque Show and had a blast. At one point I turned to R and said, "Who knew there was such a thing as a sexy mime!" It's very cool to see women who have so much confidence in their bodies even when they may be bigger in some places and smaller in others than society says they should be.

The MC pulling a condom through his nose, though... Now that freaked me out.

I had the weirdest feeling of deja vu while walking home from work last week. It was one of those intense, full-body flashbacks. A college kid rode past me on his bike, and I could swear that he was the doppelganger of the boy who made gym class my 7th grade year a living hell. In 1987 my family was living in Bakersfield, California, for the year. In a way, it was one of the best school experiences that I had, because we actually lived in the neighborhood that the school was in, so the friends I made were within walking distance instead of scattered all over the city. But then there was this kid...

I can't even remember his name now, and I wouldn't have thought I remembered what he looked like well enough to pick him out of a police lineup. He was short and scrawny with a kind of ratty little face, and that's about it. What I do remember is that when our gym class had to spend several weeks square dancing he would pointedly hold every other girl's hand during the dance, but make a deliberate effort to avoid touching mine. It wasn't like he was someone I had a crush on either, which I think made his rejection seem all the more significant, in a bizarre sort of way. I mean, that's an age when you're just starting to seriously struggle with what will and won't make guys look at you. And to get this completely unprompted rejection, like you have a quarantine zone around you... Well, let's face it. It should make you angry, but the way little girls are socialized to be nice all the time it makes you turn it inward and you end up internalizing the lesson that there's something wrong with you.

I think that feeling, that there was some secret aura that made me unpretty, stuck with me all the way through high school, only started to lift in college, and still sneaks up on me to this day if I don't consciously fight against it. For the typical teenager, there are more ways than Philip Larkin dreamt of for people to fuck you up.

Which brings this all back to the kid on his bike. As you grow up you gloss over and subsume a lot of the stuff from your childhood. Before last week I couldn't tell you of the last time I thought about this middle school memory, and I certainly hadn't ever connected it to my self image. But then this doppelganger comes by from out of nowhere, and as he passed I could feel my hand ball up in a fist, and all I wanted to do was hit his memory so hard it would ache for years.