LaurieWrites

Spend it like you got it.

Apparently the antidote for an inexplicably melancholy Sunday is to sleep on and off until 1:30 like you've been drugged, get dressed with absolutely no idea of where you're going to go once you're ready, leave the house, and spend $200 in two hours. This included:

$42 at Ann Taylor Loft, a scary preppy store where I never shop, but which has nice end-of-season deals on worky-type clothes, innocuous sweaters and whatnot, and I've been going in looking a little bit too much like Mary Kate Olsen. lately. Just add like a hundred or so pounds, and certainly keep the coffee cup. DO NOT TOUCH THE COFFEE CUP. Thanks. Let's just say that "Boho-chic" doesn't fly in Rockville. I should really live in New York.

$82 in Whole Foods, because cheese is SO good, and nuts and olives are SO good, and summer produce is SO good, and not here for long. Plus, I even let myself visit the "natural beauty" aisles, where I never go, and also to buy magazines, which I've not been doing either. Retail therapy can be an ugly, ugly thing.

$40-some bucks in Tower Records. Here are some reasons why I love Tower Records (in spite of the fact that I find it one of the most aesthetically DISpleasing, and odd-smelling, while we're at it, stores in the universe.)

*I almost always find what I want. I went in wondering if I could find the Wedding Crashers soundtrack for cheap, because I'd read that it was this collection of decent tunes from newish bands, including Bloc Party, Rilo Kiley, and Death Cab for Cutie, plus a new Flaming Lips song for geezers like me. I have to admit that I had never heard a Death Cab for Cutie song, and I was kind of sick of hearing about them all the time and having no idea what they sounded like. I'm not ready to commit to full cds for most of these bands so I figured why not just try the soundtrack? It was $8.99 at Tower! $8.99! I was so jazzed. I mean, I was already questioning my need for it - and to find it for so cheap is like a "get out of jail free" card. First impressions: Death Cab song (Sound of Settling) is pretty good, if a little too...I'm not sure what: 

i've got a hunger
twisting my stomach into knots
that my tongue was tied off
my brain's repeating
"if you've got an impulse let it out"
but they never make it past my mouth.

bah, bah, this is the sound of settling.

Knots that my tongue was tied off? And no dear, actually, the sound of settling is "For Christ's sake, honey, I've got to put some gas in the lawn mower. YOU cook the bacon." My guess is these dudes don't know from settling yet. Haha. I just made myself laugh. Also, the Spoons song is good, and I'm digging the Bloc Party. I might have to sign on for some more of their stuff.

*They're featuring  Abdel Wright in the "new and notable" or "fresh and funky" or whatever stupid label they put on their displays featuring breakout artists. Abdel so CRAZY. He was on tour with Citizen Cope (aka my baby daddy - HAHAHAHA) last year, and we saw him several times. The most memorable was hanging out outside the Funk Box in Baltimore, watching Abdel and his Latino sidekick standing in the street, with Abdel chewing whoever was on the other end of the cellphone OUT. Talk about blue language. Wow. He was seriously displeased with whatever this person was telling him. And then when we saw him play he was his usual chill and "Jah loves you" self, so we were cracking up. Anyway, let's see if Abdel hits it big. Apparently he used to be in prison in Jamaica, and rumour has it that Bono said he was "the greatest reggae musician since Bob Marley". I've seen Abdel a couple times and I'm not ready to sign that petition, but he's scrappy - I have to give him credit. Plus his photo on his website is kind of cute. He's never looked like that in person, but maybe he's all happy and chill now that he's got that record deal.

*I got Pure Imagination for a little more than 10 bucks. Did I need this book? No. Did I know this book existed before I wandered into the book section? No. Did I suddenly need to have it, have to have it? Absolutely. And although this should be why I should HATE Tower, it's a reason why I love it...I am so happy to have this book. It's very fun. Take that, Tim Burton.

*The magazine section is phenomenal. Truly.

If I have not yet mentioned my hatred of broadband Internet, please allow me to do so now. I HATE BROADBAND.

$10 dinner on at Lebanese Taverna, for which I had to wait WAY too long, but sometimes it must be done.

And that was that. I'm on the wagon for the rest of the week.

rock on

Take a guess

One of the world's great questions, partially answered.

make me wanna holla

So I go to see Four Brothers tonight, which I knew very little about going in, and the film is just brutal. It's violent, and crazed, and has Andre "3000" Benjamin in a decidedly non-musical role, although his voice is so distinctive that I kept expecting him to go, "3000's always changing but you stay the same/and I neeeeeeeedddddddddd thaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttt". I'm a little bit of an Outkast fan. Can't help it.

Anyway, this movie had me freaked out to an incredible degree - hands over eyes, fidgeting around, the whole nine. It was all guns and death and execution-style killings in snow and people being drowned under the ice. Insane. John Singleton has gotten even more pissed off since Boyz n the Hood. I don't see this type of film very often, and I was reminded why. I'd had no caffeine for many hours and still thought I was going to jump out of my seat like fifty times. It wasn't all bad. I love Mark Wahlberg, although I have no idea why, and Tyrese is no harm to the eyes either, and oh yeah, not a bad actor. The soundtrack was dope - lots of Marvin Gaye (it's set in Detroit - talk about "Inner City Blues". Let's give that song of the day props while we're at it - the sexiest, grooviest song about poverty and devastation ever.).   

A highlight was the trailer for Jake Gyllenhaal's upcoming movie. It's called Jarhead. I know, me getting into a movie about the Marines is unlikely and strange, but as my friend said unexpectedly when he came on the screen, "He's so weird but I just LIKE him." Which is why we are friends.

After the alarming movie, we went to the IHOP, where at one point a big man walked by our table and I told everyone I was never going to see a violent film again, because I totally expected him to produce a gun and start shooting. The friends who went and saw the movie about the 40 year old virgin laughed at us for passing up that genius film for Four Brothers. 

It got better after that. I haven't hung out in a place like that for hours and talked about life and drank coffee and gotten silly since those lovely Denny's days in Ohio, and it was sweet indeed. IHOP also makes a nice crepe with lemon butter. Yes, indeed.

I am really grateful for my friends. I have so many amazing people in my life right now who are supportive, gifted, creative and fun, and I'm feeling pretty lucky about that. Things have been so hectic, but it's so true that sometimes you just have to take the break and hang out with people...I've also found that I still give pretty good advice (thought I was tapped out there for a while!) and some people - even those who are not completely desperate or drunk out of their minds - seem to appreciate it! ; )

I can't handle their truth. I admit it.

As a pregnant Britney Spears continues her neverending round-the-world spa tour of exposed, expanding tummy, smoothie drink or Starbucks clutched in her (didn't you KNOW? SHE'S TOTALLY PREGNANT!) hand, she's like, totally into being married. "I think our love is growing," says Spears of her relationship with Federline. "It sounds clichéd and cheesy, but it's true."

K-Fed has these pearls of - uh - wisdom: "It's kind of like a turn-on knowing that she's having my child." Fo' realz.

Ah, vinyl...

The best songs off this pile of lps I found in the basement and am now pricing on ebay:

Aha - Hunting High and Low.

Marillion - Kayleigh

Led Zeppelin - Ramble On (off of Led Zeppelin II. This is my mom's. It's from 1969 - still in pretty good shape, too.)

Hall and Oates - Rich Girl. Love me some Rock 'n Soul, Part 1. Whatever happened to Part 2, I dunno.

America - Sister Golden Hair. This is one of my favorite songs of all time.

Charlie Sexton - Beat's So Lonely. This is the hottest song. I loved this song so much and used to sing and dance to it in my room. I was in love with him - for real. I was 13. Don't laugh. He has likely never felt love like that which beat within my adolescent heart for him. Seriously. He has a new album coming out in September, which of course I'm all over. I'll be going to check him out, cause he's still a looker, and now it's a legal relationship. ; ) Not to mention, he's spent the last ten years performing with Bob Dylan (he was on Love and Theft), Susan Tedeschi, Rufus Wainwright, Lucinda Williams (eek)...Ah, just read it all here. I was just doing the math, and the online press kit confirmed that he was indeed 17 when he had his first hit. I was thinking, 37? Hmmm. Not that much older than I was then, maybe he isn't the same guy? Tis. Sounds like he's done it his way. Good for him.

Book of Love - I Touch the ROSES. Oh my GOD. I forgot about this song. I can't believe I own this album.

Power Station - Some Like it Hot and the Heat is On, extended 12". John Taylor = LOVE, surpassing Charlie Sexton love by many miles. This was, "I made him a scrapbooK" love. I have pictures, but images aren't loading well on here right now, so we'll have to wait 'til later for that silly goodness. Anyway, in spite of (because of?) the mania, I learned at 14 to appreciate Bernard Edwards bass lines, so it served me well. (Who knew "Le Freak"'s working title was "Fuck Off"? Have you heard about the new dance craze?)

Madonna - Into the Groove, extended remix

The prices online are so bad, and I'm really loving looking at these albums. I can remember how excited I was to own them, to read the lyrics and check out the artwork on the sleeve. Cds were nonexistent. Who knew? Screw selling them. I'm getting a new needle for my turntable. Cause I do have a turntable. Oh yeah.

Tuesday 8.16

Revelations on a relatively cool day in August:

I'm really thinking deep thoughts, I promise, but I'm sick of them and they are getting on my last nerve. Therefore, a collection of random musings feels good right about now.

Here is Mr. Tomato Head.

He is a ridiculous tomato that my Uncle Paul gave to my mother on Sunday at our family reunion at the house by the bay, a.k.a. Swampland. We were all so sick from the heat, sitting outside barely able to keep our heads up, eating a "refreshing meal" of fried chicken, beef barbecue and ribs. Oh. my. God. It was possibly the hottest day I've ever spent outside in my life history. I don't recall ever feeling like that before. But Mr. Tomato Head was a highlight. He had a little knob that you can't really see in this photo. Hilarious. The great misshapen tomato of 2005. He tasted good, though. My parents are obsessed with tomatoes. It's kind of frightening me, but I'm trying to roll with it, since I'm all about harmless things that make people happy. They can be few and far between, it seems.

Elvis died on this date in 1977. I didn't see it on any news. But I bet that won't be the case two years from now. Just....oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh......lovely he was.

Did anyone know that the pc term is no longer "impersonator"? Indeed, my friends, it's "tribute artist". Get it right. i.e., the Trippin' Billies. Who used to to be Tripping, if I'm not mistaken. Damn those lawsuits.

Gmail sucks (it's almost midnight, and my e-mails from late last night through about an hour ago are just now rolling sporadically in...) but I still love Google with an everlasting love - Image Search in particular.

Madonna fell from horse, broke bones. For God's sake, why is this still one of the major headlines? She is apparently fine. Although, on a day when Rena Sofer (who?) having a baby was a major headline on people.com, it's really not surprising. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey must not be getting into any fights outside of LA clubs this week.

I really don't like aerobics instructors who scream at me such that I flinch. I just got screamed at silently all day, lady. You have a microphone. Chill, please. I have hidden your keys. Chill.

Tommy Lee went back to college on tv tonight. I didn't watch the show, which means I still have some standards, apparently. I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. His gpa is probably higher than mine was freshman year.

After a talk with my friend Kim today, my love for Iyanla Vanzant is unabated. I know, it's so embarrassing. But that book "In the Meantime" really helped me. And Kim's reference to the "quiet time"...yeah, that's what it is. Dammit.

I'm excited for fall. New starts, new ideas, new places, new faces. Bring it ON. I am so over my hamster wheel right now, because that's what it ALL IS.

Homemade soup is so good. I'm going to eat at Soup's On all the time from now on! Gypsy soup...veggies, garbanzos, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, a touch of cinnamon. Abbondanza. Heaven help me. So incredibly good. I interviewed this lady a couple years ago for the magazine, and just started going back in for lunch. There's so little "real food" near my office, it's amazing to me that the lines aren't out the door. And it works with the blessed Weight Watchers, which must work this time...Why must being healthy be such an effort? Actually, I'm inspired to try to make some soup myself this fall. It can't be that hard to invent different kinds. Fun, maybe. We'll see. Bust out the bread machine again and get cookin'. So many cool things to do, such limited time.

I have a new e-mail address associated with the domain name I bought a year or so ago. I'm really excited. I keep checking it over and over even though I know there won't be any new mail yet, because it's a step in the right direction, and it's MINE. : ) It's the first thing I've been excited about all month. Now I just need to build a site. Aiyiyi.

I wouldn't mind going to Hunter Thompson's memorial bash. Wow.

And speaking of Johnny Depp, I did not love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I didn't. I tried to. I wanted to. But I didn't. Parts of it were incredible. Parts of it were just Tim Burton jacking off (sorry) unnecessarily. I thought the Violet Beauregard character, and her hellatious mother, were woefully miscast. The opening sequence when Wonka comes out of the factory (burning puppets, anyone?) was anti-climacting. The boat ride was only so-so.

But I still cried real tears like the little girl I am when the sweet, sweet Charlie (Freddie Hightower is a great actor) found the freaking golden ticket. There are so few moments, on film or certainly in real life, of such unadulterated joy, and there is really nothing that I find more moving. I was thinking about how if I had a child, I'd be so happy for them if they got such an amazing prize (particularly if my teeth were all messed up like Helena Bonham Carter's in this joint, and I had to make cabbage soup for all four grandparents and my kid and husband every night...That'll wear on a girl. But I digress.), and how much it means, at that age, to get something you really want, so badly, especially when you don't think in a million years that you'll get it. It's the crux of the film, for me, more than and beyond the whole "Wonka's gone loony and wants to leave you his factory" surprise bit at the end, because for Charlie (who I believe is one of the great heroic idealists of American film, I kid you not. And I'm not exaggerating. Call me a geek. Go ahead.) the prize was the ticket. The prize was the trip, the opportunity to get out of his shitty life for a day and taste some magic. He's like Wilbur in Charlotte's Web when Charlotte writes "HUMBLE" about him in her web. It's true. He doesn't...expect anything more. And when it happens, he still doesn't quite believe that it's all for him, but not in a low-self-esteem, "ohnonotmethatcouldn'tpossiblybeforme" kinda way. At the risk of sounding ponderous, I think it's a profound message. So that part was totally worth it in the new version also. But overall, this wacky group still has my chocolate-covered heart.  At happy hour on Friday, one of the girls said she'd never seen Willy Wonka, along with a couple other seminal works of American film, which must not have been that good, because I can't remember them right now, and we were all going, "YOU CAN BORROW MY COPY. YOU HAVE TO." But we had all seen "Grease", so there was the common ground. Scary.

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams," Willy Wonka

The Less I Seek My Source

I seem on an involuntary mission lately to dissect and reassemble all of the pieces of my brain and my life, even more so than usual. 

This, of course, will drive you completely insane, not to mention make you very bad company for the people you love, and who, amazingly, still love you, and listen anyway. I know it's good, because it means I'm letting change into my life, the difficult kind, the that-which-does-not-kill-you kind, the kind that will turn out great in the end, the "this is for the best" kind (which you will NEVER hear me say to another person, may God strike me dead. These words should go to the Cemetery of Dead Phrases, along with "it was his time," "she looks just like she's sleeping", "it's a paradigm shift, to be quite honest", "it was God's will," and "Are those Bugle Boy Jeans you're wearing?" I mean, please.) This is the hardest thing for me, and I fight it with every ounce of stubborn resistance I cart around with me, which is to say, more than can fit in your basic road hog SUV, named after something like a large animal none of us will ever see except on the Discovery Channel, or a tragic weather event (Next up, the FORD RIPTIDE, or the TOYOTA TYRANNOSAURUS. Guarantee).

Despite this article in the Post today that tells me I'm likely never to get Alzheimer's or a related dementia due to the mental calisthenics I go through every day, I think there can be a thing as too much thought. Perhaps it's just the shrill tone with which I'm answering most simple questions, lately that tells me I may be at capacity. "Salad dressing? What kind do you HAVE? NO, NOT FAT FREE," for instance. Or, "What do you MEAN, I am SUPPOSED TO BE ATTENDING THE MEETING? THAT meeting? HAHA. Why, SURE, I'll be right up." I'm charming, though. I promise. I am still charming. I think.

This is a good period of time to spend reading, because books will not bitchslap you in response to your most recent repetitively neurotic or excessively sharp comment. There's a quote in Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (fantastic book, by the way) to the effect of "I've thought myself out of happiness a million times and never ONCE into it." It hit home with me, hard.

So I was listening to the Indigo Girls, yesterday, and  "Closer to Fine" was once again most perfect for my recent state of mind. It's a song about someone who's gone through all of the usual channels to "make life make sense", which is just an inherently comical concept anyway.

"I went to the doctor/I went to the mountain/I looked to the children/I drank from the fountain...I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free."

Of course, I have to add, "except for I have to spend the rest of my life bowing to Sallie Mae".

After all of this, the conclusion: "The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine."

It's a Zen koan, of sorts - simplistic truth that can solve some seemingly complicated, mostly self-created, problems if applied to a confused little human brain, I think. They play this song at every concert, and there is typically such intuitive unity in the audience, as everyone sings along and means it, that for a minute I don't think anyone in the room feels quite so crazy as they might (if indeed, they do...) when they're roaming around in the crazy world alone, mining their source for SOME DAMNED DEFINITIVE SOMETHING, please, just to knit all this shit together just for a minute, thanks. It becomes quite possible for a minute to think that you won't do that anymore, when you go out of here, the music ringing in your ears...because these smart, talented ladies have told you a better way. A closer to fine way. Simple. Done.

It's a nice thought, anyway, and sometimes it works, even if it's just for a little while. And although this is one of the songs of my LIFE, there are some days it comes in especially handy.

"We go to the bible/ we go through the workout/ We read up on revival/ and we stand up for the lookout/There's more than one answer to these questions/pointing me in a crooked line/
The less I seek my source for some definitive/The closer I am to fine."

Opting Out

If I had a child, I'd be telling them to leave the kid alone. As it stands, I'll just be telling my friends.

Deep Thoughts

Cox: Thanks to your little gesture, she actually believes that the Earth is full of people who are deep down filled with kindness and caring!
Kelso: Well that's absurd. People aren't made of chocolate. You know what they are? Bastards. Bastard-covered bastards with bastard filling."
Cox: Exactly!

I watch "Scrubs" occasionally, and always laugh (and love me some Zach Braff...sigh...) when I do. I was cleaning out old e-mail drafts and saved junk, and found the quote above from last season (I think...lost track.) I felt it should be preserved here...although I LOVE people. Really.....I.........do. Bless their bastard-filled and covered HEARTS. ; )

Here's a comment from one of the readers of his Garden State blog, to continue the "bastard" theme of this post. He had just implored the commenters to stop flaming each other, and this response shows that folks are, indeed, creatively insane:

A Haiku for Zach.

Zach Braff has a blog
comment bastards sadden him
Bobby beats Whitney