Five scenes from Saturday

2:50 pm, Camp Street:
Young gay hipster, all Ben Sherman plaid shirt, skinny jeans and Ray Bans, flailing arms indignantly, telling his bored female friend about his "total bitch" of a boss.

3:00 pm, Pleasant St.:
A freshly dead parrot carcass, flattened on the brick banquette

11:30 pm, Canal St.:
Five police men in the foyer of the Ritz Carlton. A trail of blood on the marble floor leads from door to elevator, a demitasse sized pool of blood in the elevator.
Another trail on floor 3.

11:32, Ritz Lobby:
My friend's friend: "What happened?" Concierge: "I don't know."
Janitor, with mop, furtively: "um...just a lil Ike and Tina, you know."

12:01 am, Royal St.:
Two prostitutes, both in white shorts and Burlington Coat Factory heels, leaning on the gate of the police station, mopping the sweat off their brows, half-heartedly trying to solicit us.

tripped up

Fresh off the wire:

"Alaska – The teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose quest for the vice presidency began to go downhill the day she announced the pregnancy, has given birth to a son, a magazine reported Monday. Bristol Palin, 18, gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston on Sunday,agazine reported Monday."

"Tripp"?
Umm....As in Linda?
Or what the mother of the "groom" is doing currently?

Read it all here

Top six songs (found by way of others) this year

In no particular order



Vampire Weekend's Oxford Comma (by way of Frontier Psychiatrist)



Sam Sparro's Black and Gold (by way of joe to hell)



Etienne Daho's Comme un Igloo (by way of thombeau)



Norma Jean's Saturday (by way of tjb)



Francoise Hardy's "Il n'ya pas d'amour heureux" (by way of tjb)



Santogold's L.E.S. Artistes (by way of michael)

for ladies only?

So the other night stumbled upon a picture of Gregory Harrison, of "For Ladies Only" and "Logan's Run" fame (notice which takes precedence).

Here he is in "Logan's Run," you know the episode where he strips down triumphantly to reveal his famous mind-control-defeating black kryptonite panties.
(I kid.)



Let's just say that this picture helped turn me into a homosexual.

A bit more research turned up a more recent picture of Greg, and damn if he's not still hot. What gives?

a movie non-review

I took myself to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" on Christmas day.
Thankfully, the theater was full. It didn't really matter to me if the movie was good or bad, I was going to see it. As it turned out, I actually enjoyed it (though it's a bit long). It's nothing earth shattering, but it is a lovely movie, beautifully filmed.

Of course the main draw for me was seeing the hometown. Most of the movie was filmed near my friend Michael's old home. Part of the house that Cate and Brad move into as a young couple I'd actually looked at with a friend who'd thought of buying it.

They filmed a brief part of it a few hundred feet from my bed here....I was very excited to see my current neighborhood for a brief while near the end...and there are few scenes near where I used to live pre-K.

Anyway, like I said, it didn't much matter if the movie were good or not. I'll see anything with costumes, and it stars my neighborhood!
Plus there's Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett (looking too beautiful for words).
I mean really...if that's not incentive enough to see it, I don't know what else could be.

best news of 2009!

I can't tell you how excited I am! I've been waiting for years for this to come out.
The first season comes out on April 21st.

Rhoda, needless to say, was profoundly formative to me in early childhood. It's where I first got the idea to hang up baskets on the wall, to live in NYC, to find jewish men sexy, to battle weight issues, to deal with overbearing mothers, to want to dress windows, to crack wise.

Read more here

overheard

Yesterday I had lunch at a local Vietnamese restaurant. The plaintive strains of "Ave Maria" faded away, and the next song cued up. Its melody kept nagging me until I was at the end of the bowl.














It was then I realized it.
It was nothing less than a young woman delicately singing Oran Juice Jones's classic, "The Rain"...in Vietnamese.



By then it was too late for me to memorize how to say "It's my world, you just a squirrel, tryin to get a nut" in Vietnamese.

(Ah well...good thing probably, because I'd be saying it all the time.)

Completely random Christmas eve sights

The deserted courtyard of a suburban restaurant, the westbank's idea of what "California" must be like, very crowded with bougie types (to quote my students), while we waited for 45 minutes for a table.

A hundred or so feet away the Burger King parking lot where a young man was shot in the head in his car a few nights ago. The police found him slumped over the wheel, the car still running.




Near my mother's home, nestled next to a gated community and strip mall after strip mall, four young Mexican men purchasing a soon to be slaughtered goat for Christmas dinner.



My childhood room....now with cable. The a/c has been running all day, when just a few days ago it was snowing.



Two elderly women in matching Christmas sweaters, one in green, the other in red, both wheeling matching oxygen tanks, eating fried catfish at the table next to us.



The lights in City Park, in the fog, as I drove home.

You're invited!

To our staff Christmas party this past week:


















(please insert sweater, pin and hair in clip above)

randomocity

Miss Janey tagged me, and TJB threw down the gauntlet, (who you callin' a punk, punk? Huh, huh?) so here are twelve, count 'em twelve random facts about yours truly.

The fine print here: 1. Link to the person who tagged you. 2. Post the rules on your blog. 3. Write six random things about yourself. 4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them. 5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog. 6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. My paternal great,great grandfather was famed for shooting a guy in a bar fight, scooping out his eyeballs with a tea spoon and filling the sockets with sand, as told to me by my much beloved grandfather (who spent a spell
in jail himself) when I was just a wee tot.

2. I started out college intending to major in architecture.

3. I failed remedial college algebra...twice.

4. I spent my high school study halls doodling fashion designs.

5. I was recruited by the coach to play football in high school. I declined, citing absolute ignorance of the rules.

6. I was vegetarian for two years. It wreaked havoc on my hair, so I stopped.

7. I've been asked by two sets of lesbians to father their children. Alas
(?), neither quite panned out. One couple separated, the other got
another cat.

8. I am an only child but have 37 first cousins.

9. I like the smell of diesel. It reminds me of trips into the city.

10. I spent much of my childhood in trees.

11. I don't like horror movies.

12. Two of my favorite Christmas presents came from my paternal grandfather (up there).
a. The pony (however brief):

b. a stack of rough brown paper tablets (from the paper mill) as tall as my 5 year old self.


13. I don't do well with rules, so anyone who wants to be tagged, you're it.