LaurieWrites

Gwen is Brainy

I admit it - I enjoy "Hollaback Girl". It makes no sense, really, but that's okay with me, because its sole purpose in my life is to get me through my trip to work. It works, because it's catchy (whoever came up with the synthesizer hook is a genius - simple, addictive...) and unintentionally funny. And before 8 a.m., the best possible thing for me is to sit at traffic lights yelling out "The shit is BANANAS, b-a-n-a-n-a-s!!!" like 25 times. More funny Hollaback Mountain commentary here.

Gwen Stefani, however, made the grade over at Brainyquote.com, and that's kind of curious. There's nothing like looking up some wise words from Virginia Woolf or Eleanor Roosevelt to come across these gems from a wanna-be Harajuku girl:

"But can I always wear an Alice-in-Wonderland costume? I probably shouldn't."

"I was super-ska girl when I met Tony."

"Tomorrow night I'll be in bed with my husband again and it will be really great."

"If you only knew what a dork I really am."

"When I'm 40, maybe I really will want to get up and be 30 pounds overweight and I'll want to get out there and sing songs for people."

Quotes, yes. Brainy, not so much. There were a couple that almost made it, like this one:

"It was such a turning point to find that I had a talent and I had something to contribute, somewhere."

But NOT quite enough to warrant her 55 (55!!!!!) quotes to Roosevelt's 57. Curious. Odd. A little bit bananas.

Gettin' jiggy with the new adjustment tool in my photo software

And everyone will be sorry for the ten minutes that I'm fascinated with it. : )

Singing

It was a "what's it all for" sort of day, a Cat in the Hat sort of day, although not cold or wet. We work so hard, don't we? Most of us, anyway? I stayed in tonight. There were people calling wanting to do Friday night things but at the last minute, when I realized how much of the rest of my weekend was going to be given over to activity and conversation, my car turned homeward...Food for my dog and some friends to talk to, a bath and a glass of wine, my poetry homework, seemed like a better alternative for the rest of the evening, and they have been. This is enough tonight, although nothing is feeling quite like enough, if that makes sense at all.

I heard "In My Life," by the Beatles last night, and I cried for the first time in a while, in the cold, in my car. It's one of my favorite songs. It's so short, and yet there's so much in it. There is so much love around me sometimes that I really feel ungrateful for my bitchy, crappy moods and involuntarily sarcastic observations. Underneath it all, I want the people I love to know that there is sunshine and lollipops intended for them - honestly, always (except when they REALLY piss me off). I've never been a person who knew how to show that without fail at the appropriate times. I've always seen too much, had too much throttling through my brain all at once, for that kind of simple happiness. An old friend in Dayton said once, "Nothing escapes you. Everything has...weight." No one had ever phrased it that way, but I never forgot the way she looked when she said it.

There is also so much pain around me at the same time that I'm not sure what to do with it all. So I'm singing a lot, for lack of a better cure. You should sing, too, even if you think you can't. It really does make a person feel better - or at least this person.

Coupla things....

Photography is kicking my ass. My class is really difficult. My professor looks like Martin Short, in about twenty years. He doesn't look QUITE like Martin Short as Ed Grimley (SNL, people. Sorry. If you catch the Thanksgiving episode in reruns, you'll be quite happy, I assure you, unless you have no sense of humor, and don't find the part where he takes the pies out of the oven and burns his hands and jumps all around his kitchen in that kooky, jerky way one of the most ridiculously entertaining things you've ever seen in your life. Seriously. But no pressure.)  Still, I was thinking about how much his skits used to make me laugh, just this morning, and then I had class tonight and saw my professor, and it all came rushing back. So here he is. I must say.

Did I mention that this class is kicking my ass? SO MANY LIGHTS. Oh my GOD. You wouldn't believe. My friends and family would be appalled if they saw the equipment that I'm being allowed to handle, in a room where he says things like, "Yeah, there's 2,000 volts in there you have to discharge before you turn it on again. That could getcha pretty good." One of the more capable people in our class melted a huge standing light this week, and it caught fire, and it caused a big scene, and now he has to replace it. ONE OF THE MORE CAPABLE PEOPLE. It is serious pressure, just to take pictures. And I feel like I'm so behind. But my negatives still turn out really well, and my first print review of the semester was a relative success, so I guess I'm doing something right. It's just...all the lights. Wow. It's overwhelming. They move around on these huge booms, and they have boxes with buttons on them that say things like "watt seconds" and "combine" and "discharge." And there are cords with prongs to be dealt with, and things called "barn doors" and "snoots" and more normal things that I sort of understand like "reflectors" and "bulbs". Tonight we were climbing ladders to learn how to adjust and change backdrops. I've never stuck with anything this technical, this long. I was thinking tonight that even if I don't memorize all the details, I'll still understand how to do this stuff in a general sense, for the rest of my life, and that's a cool thing. There's so much that I want to learn, so I guess I'll just keep trucking along. I haven't had much of a chance to play with the new camera, but this weekend...I swear.

I am over the upsetting Valentine's day card. Over it. Completely. This is good, record healing time.

Today was beautiful. The weather was incredible. And it's February. It's been a really, really weird winter so far, but it's all good.

I bought my mom "Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits" for Valentine's Day, mostly because she listened to her a lot when I was little so she's one of my first musical memories (along with Olivia Newton John. "Please Mister Please", "Have You Never Been Mellow", "If You Love Me Let Me Know", "Let Me Be There." Child, please. Don't funk with my heart.). And at first she looked at me like I was all crazy, but tonight I heard her singing "When Will I Be Loved" in the laundry room, and I was all, "Yeah. Thought so."

Fell back in love with Fountains of Wayne this week, after a brief sabbatical, as I decided definitively that "The Girl I Can't Forget" is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. Saw Girlyman again last night, and although I have to admit that it wasn't the best show of theirs I've seen (those would be at Jammin' Java last fall for the sheer power of the show and the music, and at Iota in...wow, it was 2004, because that was a night when I was all in love and in music) it was still a great time. They are seemingly lovely people who write, sing, and play beautiful songs, and there is nothing that I support more than that.

Patty Griffin, also. To be that talented - amazing. Give her a listen. "When it Don't Come Easy," off of the new record, is a heartbreaker, but oh so right on.

Hotlanta next week should be fun. I've been around here for a while. It's time for a little break. I'm so excited - I get to see some friends, learn some things, and check out a new city. Jazzed.

Tomorrow is Friday, and once again I am so happy.

Fountains of Wayne, "Red Dragon Tattoo"

Monday, gonna take a ride on
The N train down to Coney Island
With the money I saved
Gonna get me engraved
Drink down a lot of Basil Hayden
Get kicked out when I can't see straight and
What an island can be on
Under the neon

Red dragon tattoo
Is just about on me
I got it for you
So now do you want me
With nothing to prove
Will you be my honey, oh yeah
In you I confide
Red dragon tattoo
I'm fit to be dyed
Am I fit to have you

I hear the man say "you want to see the others
A mermaid and a heart that says mother?"
But I don't know from maritime
And I never did hard time
I brought a .38 Special CD collection
Some Bactine to prevent infection
And in case I get queasy
A photo of Easy Rider

Red dragon tattoo
Is just about on me
I got it for you
So now do you want me
With nothing to prove
Will you be my honey, oh yeah
In you I confide
Red dragon tattoo
I'm fit to be dyed
Am I fit to have you

Will you stop pretending I've never been born
Now I look a little more like that guy from KorN
If you came a little bit closer
You'd see it isn't painted on
Oh no no no

Red dragon tattoo
Is just about on me
I got it for you
So now do you want me
With nothing to prove
Will you be my honey, oh yeah
In you I confide
Red dragon tattoo
I'm fit to be dyed
Am I fit to have you

They were always on his mind, apparently.

"Cowboys are Secretly Fond of Each Other"?

That's just weird.

I mean, not the cowboys being fond of each other part. If cowboys want to get their swerve on on the range, that is just fine with me (although I can never watch that old cook in the Old El Paso commercials quite the same again). I do find it kind of odd that Willie Nelson would write a song about it, and that the news media would be so captivated by it (and yes I understand marketing, and the Brokeback Mountain craze and ALL OF IT. I'm just wondering aloud in an existential, "how did we get here from there" sense, because I like to do that sometimes, capiche?) I don't understand how if this was such a huge and intoxicating issue in this country, we avoided dealing with it for all of these years. Are we to believe that Annie Proulx writes "Brokeback Mountain", Ang Lee makes a kickass movie out of it, and lo, the floodgates are open for the whistle to be blown on all cowboys, everywhere? It's just...strange. 

I don't know any cowboys. I mean, where HAVE all the cowboys gone, anyway? ; ) And I find the concept of rampant homosexuality among this relatively small focus group to be entertaining at the least and fascinating at the we're-now-stretching-it best. Are we to consider it the Nelson Report, a la Kinsey? And what's with the cumbersome title? It sounds like a British porn film, if such a thing exists.

I'm overthinking this, but maybe the Tom and Kate breakup rumors were just too much for me to handle for one day. Maybe Tom really IS a cowboy. Maybe Willie can help him where others have tried and failed. Maybe Jake Gyllenhall and Heath LEDGAH will headline Farm Aid.

I really need to go lie down, and stop reading the news online.

They put you on the treadmill...

I hate interval training. I hate it. I even hate the word 'interval', an ugly little word if I ever heard one. You can almost make the word 'larvae' from it - another one of my most-hated words.

Anyway, I hate it. I hate the stopping and the starting, the extreme exertion, the feeling of my skull unscrewing from the top of my head. I hate it. I hate it to the inverse degree that I love Led Zeppelin and real Coca-Cola and olives and driving with my sunroof open on a perfect day in October. My ex used to rail at me mercilessly about the need to do it if you really want to jack up your metabolism, but usually when he was telling me I ignored him. I thought I was ignoring him because I was trying really hard to do something like read a fascinating article about making snazzy bagged lunches in Woman's World (don't you love it when there's only one magazine left on the rack at the gym?) But I probably really ignored him because I kind of knew he was right, and admitting that ranks up there with sitting in rush hour traffic in the pouring rain with no coffee in a car with no radio. Undoable.

Cut to now, though, when after a solid month of working out, drinking a gross amount of water, parking farther away from my destination and all that shit - and NOT eating a pound of truffles, or real butter every day, or drinking half and half, or any other ridiculous practice which might explain this - I've gained FOUR F'ING POUNDS. I'm retaining water like a pregnant diabetic woman who just ate a bag of Chex Mix, and my knees hurt. It's just too soon for prosthetic joints, I swear.

So tonight, when I read an article about interval training while I was running away on the elliptical trainer, I said, "Okay, screw it. The time has come. I'm going to try this." And I lumbered over to the treadmill, set it on "manual", and started this ridiculous practice of running as fast as my crippled legs would carry me for a minute, and then alternating with a minute of "slow walking." At the same time, I had to keep track of the minutes, and attempt to reset the treadmill speed without being a cautionary tale on some web site somewhere about gym safety. ("Woman attempts interval training: Death by iPod cord strangulation") This is not easy, I'm telling you. Then there's the little factoid that I'm not in the habit of running more six miles an hour anywhere, EVER, even WHEN there's food involved. I'm more a fan of the leisurely stroll, to be honest with you.

I made it for a half hour, doing this interval thing, although there were a few hitches. Running, for instance, does things to one's gym clothing that bobbing up and down on the elliptical does not. Thank God my shorts didn't fall down, because tying them tighter what with managing all the controls and trying not to fall off when the conveyor jacked up from 3.6 to 6.2 was simply not possible. And I won't go into what the impact of running does to my thighs that walking does not. Ouch. I stopped feeling my calves halfway through, and my back is still screaming, "What fresh hell is THIS???" But I'm going to try it for a week. Or at least a couple days. And although I know I should not be scale obsessed, and should pay attention to how my CLOTHES fit, and how I FEEL, as opposed to the numbers, if I'm not down those few extra water-retained pounds by next week, it's half and half smoothies for ALL y'all.

First shots

I bought a Canon Digital Rebel today. My life has changed. Here are a couple of shots of the most important man in my life, because let's face it - in him I have a captive subject. (I'm still working on sizing, but if you care at all, click on them and they should go to full-size.):

These are the first shots of him ever without his eyes going freaky red or blue because of the camera. The haze is unavoidable...just his eyes, because he's 11. : ( Still a looker though...best dog EVER. Besides yours.

A list

McSweeney's turned it down, so I'm posting it here!

A List

The ingredients you specifically asked for on your sub from the chain sub shop that made me change my mind about wanting to date you:

A slightly toasted wheat roll

Three pieces of turkey

Three pieces of ham

Two pieces of cheese

Extra cucumbers

Extra green peppers

Some spinach

A few pickles

A little bit of salt

One squiggly line of barbecue sauce on one side only

(with two slightly burnt cookies that must still be warm, and the energy drink with the most caffeine.)

Beautiful Girl, Beautiful Jewelry

If you dig cool  jewelry (particularly of the handmade, artisanal variety), check out my friend Shobha's web site. She makes beautiful sterling pieces, including semi-precious stones, photographs, prayer cards - all kinds of cool stuff. If you're headed to Austin for SXSW, give her a call. She'll be happy to show you her work.

What a lame, strange week it has been.

Things I am totally, most definitely, absolutely, doing this weekend, just to end the suspense that I'm sure has been keeping everyone atwitter for the past five days:

Trying to forget the train wreck that was this week.

Sleeping profusely.

Buying this. (Not the "fussy" one. The writing one.) And hopefully, finally, this. And I'll probably go look at this some more, and touch it, and move the mouse around, and pretend not to care about it. You know - have a totally dysfunctional relationship with it, just in TIME for next week's CELEBRATION OF LUVVVVVVV.....Maybe if I'm completely off the chain and have delusions of financial stability, I'll take care of all of my techie needs at once. At least then I can stop obsessing about them and get on with my life, and perhaps increase my earning power, thereby justifying the exorbitant cost of a new laptop. Yes. The rationalization has begun.

Almost forget that being single on Valentine's Day is vaguely annoying because the cards on this site are so damned funny:

NOT getting up at 7 a.m. Saturday morning to go and deal with anxious 18 year olds.

Working on the "big girl side" of the photo lab for the first time. Eek. Photography is HARD, yo.

Catching up with Jason Bateman. Talk about aging well. Just lovely.

Sleeping. And sleeping. And sleeping.