18 December 2008

I just wanted a definition, but I got a dysfunctional family

I looked up the word "travesty" using my Mac's built-in dictionary widget, and got this definition-cum-tale of family resentments:

noun
a false, absurd, or distorted representation of something

verb [trans.]
represent in such a way: Michael has betrayed the family by travestying them in his plays.

Geez, Michael, why you gotta be writing mean little plays about your momma, huh? You hurt her so much that she couldn't get it out of her mind even when sitting at the office working on computer dictionary definitions. Way to go, Eugene O'Neill.

And you, Momma! Put down the drink and get back to work!

09 December 2008

Now is as good a time as any to show you my O.J. Simpson autograph


When I was a kid I bought a book that told you how to collect autographs and included addresses for famous people, including future murderers -- oops, I mean kidnappers and armed robbers.

I'm not sure where to display this photo. Next to the ones from Margaret Thatcher and Madeline L'Engle? Under the one from Shirley Temple? In a collage with the one from Johnny Cash and the one from "let's play two!" Chicago Cub Ernie Banks?

Maybe not.

p.s. I wrote Shirley Temple a poem. A poem! Ah, childhood.

24 November 2008

I am surprised that a pimp would be manipulative

"Nightline" producers and I must read the same newspapers and magazines, because they frequently air stories about things I just read about somewhere else, like when they went to visit some of those isolated tribes in the Amazon jungle that had been pictured in Scientific American via info on Survival-International.org.

So I wasn't surprised when they did a story on how the economic crisis is affecting legal brothels in Nevada, since I had read a good article about this very thing in the LA Times at the beginning of this month.

But unlike the LA Times, "Nightline" did a crap job with the story, since it came off as more of a publicity piece for the particular brothel they profiled. The ladies are so nice! They provide a "stress relief" service! Business is fine, mostly! The Madam is a shrewd business-woman with a Suze Orman haircut and a black pantsuit who just happens to take her vicious German Shepherd with her everywhere she goes!

And Neal Karlinsky, who is usually a good correspondent, was practically giggling through the whole thing. Geez, Neal, get a room! You seemed pretty amused with the orgy room, and it is 60% off these days.

Nightline's website claims that this was a story about how "desperate woman turn to world's oldest profession during economic downturn", since job applications are up at the Mustang Ranch. But the story was really more of a PR tour of the facilities, and that's not news, that's salesmanship.

Which brings me to my pimp problem. It was a madam in this case, but a madam is just a lady pimp with better marketing. Madams need a more pimped out name, like bertha. Like "Mess with me and my Bertha will break your legs, sucker!" Tough, like that.

So Nightline followed pantsuit Bertha and dog to the airport, where she and a doppleganger colleague (matching pantsuit) greeted a new recruit, a lovely young lady who applied to the prostitute job over the internet and, good news! she got the job! The Berthas swooped in as she came down the elevator so common courtesy would keep her from ditching the whole thing, and the Berthas had a black limo waiting to take her to her exciting and glamorous new life of having sex with strangers for money. Limo = class.

Nightline also showed us how the Berthas were kind enough to supply her with her own antibacterial soap and monthly HIV and herpes tests. Glamour!

After I watched this story, I got really incensed with the airport pickup and the limo and the black pantsuit. "What'd I do?" asks the pantsuit, but really, Pantsuit, you are part of the shenanigans. Don't act all innocent. That whole charade is a psychological snare to gloss over the nature of the job. It's like being interviewed in a fancy conference room where the free coffee flows when in actuality you're going to be working two floors down in a cubicle in the basement for 50 cents a mug. Only worse, because you have to have sex with lonely truckers.

I was so mad at Bertha I and Bertha II until I realized that they are pimps, and I can't be mad at pimps or Berthas for being smooth-talking and emotionally manipulative because that is what they do. That's how you keep the ladies down on the farm (ranch, in this case).

My mistake, Bertha! But "Nightline", boo to you. You totally got teased and released.

08 November 2008

I saved democracy in Nevada


Walter at the field office.

I mean, I think I did. I probably did. My husband and I drove up to Carson City in order to volunteer for the Obama campaign in this swing state, and we weren't the only ones. The sign in sheets were separated between "California" and "Local", and they had plenty of volunteers. What I'd heard about the Obama people was true -- they were extremely organized, dedicated, efficient and persistent. They had five -- five! -- offices in Carson City alone, a city of 35,000 people. I think they considered us totally lazy Communist slackers for participating in such a small way.

We went canvassing on Monday and Tuesday to urge people to vote in neighborhoods that had already had plenty of knocks on their doors. BUT only one lady yelled at us for how many door knocks she'd gotten over the past week. Most people weren't home, but the ones who were were pretty nice, especially the people in their 80s. Everyone was voting for Obama already, since our lists were mostly registered Democrats, and the O signs in the neighborhoods we went to far outnumbered the McC signs. So we were really just harassing stragglers to get to the polls. It rained on us briefly and sprinkle-snowed briefly, and the scenery in fall was simply beautiful.

We also drove up to Reno to check it out and get a quickie divorce like women in 40s movies. We forgot to get the divorce.



The Casino up the block from the field office. Cactus Jack voted Libertarian, of course.


This is what I learned about Carson City and Reno Nevada:

1. It's Ne-vad-a like glad, not Ne-vahd-a like "Ah, I got a vahse in Nevahda". "I'm glad I'm in Nevada". Or Aaaaa! There's a neon sign after me in Nevaaaaada!
2. There are slot machines in the supermarket.
3. Everyone has a dog. I'd say 80% of the houses we went to had dogs viciously slamming their bodies against the locked doors (all dogs are non-partisan). The lady who yelled at us had a cat.
4. The USA Today that I read the morning we went canvassing said the high school graduation rate in the state is 45%.
5. I think kids maybe aren't seeing the importance of graduating high school when there are slot machines in the supermarkets.
6. It's beautiful. The Sierra Nevadas are amazing. Want to see a beautiful view? Look up.
7. There are 25 legal brothels in Nevada. The laaads come to Nevaaada. I learned this from a LATimes article I read on my blackberry while driving around there -- looks like the economy is hitting them hard, too.
8. Carson City does not have a lot of frills, lifestyle-wise. Reno, in contrast, has more cute little stores and coffee shop cafes and pedestrians and is just more swinging in general. It has bigger casino resorts and is more touristy.
9. We never did locate Carson City statehouse, and there just aren't that many possibilities of where it could be.
Bonus California 10. We spent a night in Death Valley and no one died. Letdown!


View from the roof of the very nice and worth-a-visit Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.


Not all Nevada forests are on fire, just this bit around Lake Tahoe. WL wanted to take my picture, but I wasn't sure of the proper expression to have even in front of a natural and harmless fire. It just seemed rude to smile, you know?


Natty when we got home. Pretty sure she voted for McCain; she looks pissed.

31 October 2008

Fun trip to the vet (for me. Maybe less so for my cat)

I went to the vet today and there was a lady there with a cat and she said the cat's name was Roscoe P. Coleslaw.

"Ross" was a white cat, but he looked gray today because yesterday she found him playing around in the chimney. He was there for a bath. His lady had an injured arm stuck out in an L shape with an ace bandage wrapped all the way from her wrist to her armpit.

There was also a lady there with two cute, yippy little dogs who were very friendly. There were just like the lady, who was a cute little lady wearing tiny shorts who kept her cell phone glued to her ear the whole time. She told the person on the phone that some third person was "an-noy-in-GUH!" and also told that person on the phone, who was apparently a co-worker, that she LOVED her and that she LOVED working with her and NEVER wanted to not work with her.

I like people like that because they are loud and talkative and energetic and think everyone wants to pet them on head, and they are so certain of it that you can't help but do it. I like dogs like that, too.

I myself am more like Roscoe P. Coleslaw, sneaking around the chimney.

03 October 2008

Eliot Rex

According to this NY Times article Eliot Spitzer believes himself to be living a Greek tragedy.

Perhaps this means he stands in front of the bathroom mirror with the shaving razor in his hand saying, "Et tu, Joe Bruno?"

Eliot. You were not brought down by wrathful or fickle gods. You were not the victim of the cursed House of Spitzers. You seem to think running Daddy's business is some kind of exile from the kingdom, but you still have both of your eyeballs and all of your family members, and you haven't been hung upside down and flayed in even the most modest of areas, like an elbow or the top of your bald head.

You can argue that you were the victim of hubris, but it's more accurate to say you were the victim of penis. You like to rent young snatch while prosecuting others for doing the same. That's hypocrisy, fool, not poetry.

Though you'd better hope the missus never heard of Clytemnestra.

22 September 2008

Why I Love Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy paints with his face. He once plastered his head inside a wall. He made a sculpture of a man with his pants down, humping a tree. He dipped his penis in a paint can and painted with it. He created a sculpture called "Santa Claus with Buttplug", which was displayed in a public park in Belgium.

What's not to love?

His work is corporeal and messy and comes from that impulse that makes you smash your fork into your mashed potatoes and fling it around the room. It's a reminder of the human animal and the fact that all this stuff we have built around us doesn't change our animal nature. While other artists are inside playing Boggle, he's going face-first down the Slip-n-Slide.

It's also fun. I saw his current installation at the Whitney Museum, which has an open staircase leading from one gallery level to the next. His gallery was full of stuff playing with rooms, so for example a life-sized video of the camera view spinning around a room. You stand still but your viewpoint spins.

There was also a small enclosed room with an open doorway and a rolling executive leather office chair bolted in the center. The room turned around like a carousel at various speeds, speeding up and slowing down, and the chair spun with it. The drawings of the project on the wall showed a person in the chair; I wonder if it was ever tried out that way. It was fun to picture that.

But this was the best part -- there was an installation called something like Bang Bang Room or Bang Door or something. A four-walled room, each wall with a door in it. The room starts closed up, closed doors. Then each wall swings out on right-mounted hinges. Then each door opens and closes with a bang. This keeps happening, at various speeds, until the room closes back up and the cycle resets.

Do you know how pleasant the sound of a four banging doors is? In an echoing gallery space, with an open stairwell at one end that carries the sound to the galleries above and below?

The poor museum guards. There's only one way to make that job worse than boring, and this was it.

But wait! There was an elderly white male guard at one end of the bang room. He stood looking at the room. There was another guard on the opposite end, a young black lady. When the door flung open, the old guard could see through to the young guard. Then they'd slam shut, and he couldn't see her.

Every time the doors flung open, he grinned widely, raised his arm, and waved at her. Slam. Fling, grin, wave, slam.

The young guard just looked at him bleakly.

That whole scene made my day. Thanks, Paul McCarthy!

I love that he forced this museum to install such an annoying piece, and that you were reminded of it even if you went upstairs to look at the amazing Buckminster Fuller exhibit because you could still hear it when you stood near the stair side of the room. McCarthy one up on Fuller in this one.

Paints with his face, people. Chew on that.

18 September 2008



There's no better way to unwind after ninety minutes of asanas than blowing your wad at OTB. Clearly I need to move to NYC to efficiently integrate the parts of my life.

08 September 2008

Call it Miss Ross Playground



p.s. I took a stroll through the Ramble in Central Park, and I came around a bend of a narrow path beside an algae-covered lake. I was looking around, watching birds bouncing around in the trees, seeing the sights, and oh, yes, here came a guy wearing a black backpack, a white shirt, and white pants with his penis hanging out of the zipper.

Well well.

I stared very hard at the trees on the side of the trail opposite the peek-a-boo and kept on walking. He seemed a bit startled and moved his shoulder to the side and did I don't know what, because I was looking at those fascinating leaves. I think he might've been reacting to the camera in my hand. Maybe his penis is camera-shy, "No pictures!"

I passed by and came around to where I'd started on this circular bit of trail. There were two guys heading toward the guy I'd just passed, and I hung around to see what he'd show them. I saw his head (the one on his shoulders, sicko!) peek around the trail, look at the two guys, and then turn around and disappear. I don't know what happened after that because I decided I was showing too much interest in the guy with the zipper problem.

In fairness to Central Park and New York City the thousands of other men I saw on my visit there managed to keep it in their pants.

p.p.s. To purge ourselves of that story, here's another: I sat next to a couple of little girls sitting with their nanny in a coffee shop. The littlest girl asked the older one if she wanted to hear a joke and got the go-ahead. "Why couldn't the mummy come to the telephone when it rang?" the little one said. The older one said, "I know this one. He was all wrapped up." The younger one said, "That's right. She was tied up. She was chained to the floor and couldn't come to the phone when it rang." The older one slurped her drink without looking up.

I love that that little girl pictured someone's mom chained to the floor, staring helplessly at a ringing telephone, and thought that made for a fine joke.

23 July 2008

You, the Consumer, Drawn


I just got a sewing machine (for sewing! Home Ec redux!), and the best thing about it is this picture in the instruction manuel. Presumably this is the footwear that the good people at Brother envision their typical customer wearing as she sits at her crafts table in the refinished rec room. "Criminey -- I forgot to make the deviled eggs for the fair!"

It's like they're saying, "Enjoy your machine, housefrau. You can make a lot of muu-muus with this baby!"

They could've at least drawn Crocs -- stylish slopwear for those too classy for flip flops and too sane for slippers outdoors.

09 July 2008

My Goals Have Changed

When I was a kid, I got my idea of the world from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Phillies and Braves games on TV (the Braves thanks to Ted Turner and his cable station), and a basic study of American history. I believed that American Senators were present-day Jeffersons and Adamses dedicated to the ideals of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, that baseball was the noble sport of American kings (which is to say, all of us, in our no-caste-system/no-monarchy/ Common Sense society), and that we were all essentially rabble-rousing, freedom fighting pamphleteers at heart.

I may have been wrong about some of these things.

Then I read an article about Happy Chandler and I thought I'd discovered the road to a perfect life. I seized on the following goals for myself:

1. Attend Princeton.
2. Become a U.S. Senator.
3. Become Governor of a state.
4. Retire from politics, become Commissioner of Baseball.

I don't know why I fixated on Princeton; I didn't know anyone who'd driven through Princeton, NJ, much less gone to the school. For some reason known only to a sheltered kid who read too many books, attending Princeton seemed like the epitome of good breeding and fine learning in natty suits. It is possible I had seen a picture of F Scott Fitzgerald and took all the wrong lessons from it.

I wanted to be a governor, but I don't remember picking a state. I knew it wouldn't be Southern, because I'm not Southern, but it was pretty open after that. I liked the idea of being responsible for a state that was all my own.

I wanted to be the next Kenesaw Mountain Landis and rid baseball of any sneaking suspicion of foul play and keep it the fine, upstanding game it was meant to be, played by fine, upstanding lads with pure hearts.

Then I grew up. I forgot about Princeton. I watched the Iran-Contra hearings and the Anita Hill hearings. I followed the presidency of former California governor Ronald Reagan. I watched chicken-eater Wade Boggs disparage his road girlfriend when she took their arrangement public. My heart broke. My dreams died a horrible death at the hands of trickle-down economics and good old boy sexism.

Now I have new goals in life. I am older and wiser, savvier, even. I know what's really important in life. Now I want only the following two things:

1. To be in a Levitra commercial. I want to see what it's like to be so happy to be with a silver-haired chemical stud.
2. To play a mascot/Fruit of the Loom character/monster/vitamin/what have you. In a commercial. Wearing a goofy costume looks like fun.

Sorry, Congress! You'll have to make due without me.

26 June 2008

Bizarro World McDonalds


This is where Bizarro Superman eats, in the place with the disturbing blue roof.

The burgers are triangular! The coke is New Coke! The clown mascot is in fact a krunk dancer with a day job!

Oh, Lord, San Diego; you are so weird.

19 June 2008

Cemetery Gifts



I was recently visiting a cemetery and learned that you don't have to leave flowers on the grave of your loved one; you can leave creepy little dolls and holiday-themed bottles instead.

The family plot I visited had -- surprise! -- a freshly dug grave with dead roses atop a mound of dried out earth. I'd been told that my great aunt died more than a week ago, but I didn't realize she would be buried in the same plot with a bunch of the other old timers. I don't know how they're all fitting down there, and I don't want to know.

At any rate, it's a bit unnerving to see new death when you thought you were just hanging out with safe and comfy old death.

16 June 2008

I feed chickens


No, not "I: Chicken Feed" or "I feed on chickens", but I feed chickens, and it was wicked fun!

These lovely ladies are part of a flock of six owned by my friend Miro, who lives in Phoenix with her husband and is the proud flockherder of six chickens. Read all about their adventures and watch Spotty Dotty and the rest grow up here.

Apparently chickens are the goats of the fowl world -- they will eat anything. Miro gave me grape halves to offer the birds, and they clucked in delight and jumped up to peck the grapes out of my hand.

Feeding chickens and watching them interact is a surprisingly enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Jealous?

16 May 2008

Needle! Fovie Promo


You haven't been kidnapped, Mr. Jones. You've been admitted for treatment.

15 May 2008

Regina King, the UberMonarch of Acting

We'e you stunned by that one performance in RAY, and couldn't you not take your eyes of the actor, and didn't you think it deserved an Oscar? Me, too! And you know we're talking about Regina King, the Queen King of acting, the woman so versatile she needs a Bo Knows Acting campaign of her own.

Every time Ms King was on-screen in that movie, I couldn't take my eyes off her. That's what people mean when they talk about an actor bringing "energy" to a scene -- it doesn't mean shouting or running around or making those Jim Carrey faces (which, when he Eternally Sunshines or Man on the Moons, he's so good that he should only do projects with heavenly bodies in the title, but everything else gets into Fire Marshall Bill territory) -- it means being so alive that you light up the whole scene.

I just saw Year of the Dog, written and directed by Mike White, one of my favorite writers working today, and he might have performed a thought-experiment on me while casting, because he managed to fill his movie up with many of my favorites. Not least was King, but also there was my old Second City teacher Craig Cackowski! And Susan Mackin, who acted in a table read for one of my scripts! And Dr Steve Brule!

But back to business -- Regina King has that screen charisma that you can't buy or develop or fake. You either have it or you don't. Hollywood, wake up! King FTW!

p.s. How great is it that she was the kid in 227? God, could we use a dose of Marla Gibbs sass in this frozen-doll world of Hollywood women we've got going now. There are no women on TV giving us the business like Ms Gibbs did when I was growing up, and somehow I think that explains why we as a nation have become as arrogant and self-absorbed as Mr Jefferson and Jackee combined. Hey, you kids! Get off of my apartment stoop!

13 May 2008

Shower! Fovie Promo

Shower Fovie Promo
Not this time, Mr. Slasher. This lady is shower clean and knife fresh.

09 May 2008

Boy, did I have a busy day

CLRoom
I'm exhausted!

08 May 2008

I am keeping street musicians poor

I used to live in Cambridge, MA. Cambridge, Harvard Square, the T stops -- these things are to buskers as honey is to flies with tip jars.

One day I took the escalator down to the Downtown Crossing platform. There was a busker sitting on the ground, singing and playing a battered old guitar held together with duct tape. He was probably in his late thirties, black hair spiced with gray held back in a long ponytail, bestickered black guitar case open for tips. I'd seen this guy all over town as I went on my way around Harvard Square, as I mingled with the tourists at Faneuil Hall, and as I ran the "No crazies, please!" prayer loop in my head while waiting at T-stops along the red line.

I recognized him, but there's no reason he would've recognized me. I rarely gave buskers money because I rarely had money, though there was that time I heard a country singer on the corner outside the Harvard Coop that turned me into such sentimental mush that I gave her whatever was in my pocket. It was the first and last time I ever saw her.

In contrast, I saw the regulars with a regularity. I saw Guster before they had a radio hit; in between songs they said they were going to NYC for a show, and they asked if anyone knew someone there with a spare floor they could crash on. After the next song they said, No, seriously, we need someplace free to stay there.

Aging Ponytail Duct-Taped Guitar Man rarely engaged with the audience. Sometimes I liked to stop and listen to him and other street musicians as a balm to the soul; plus I didn't have a choice. Move aside to a quiet spot and you've just moved into another busker's zone.

That day in Downtown Crossing the crowd placed me near Ponytail's guitar case. While waiting for the train, I watched him sing and play and smiled my encouragement.

He stopped playing abruptly and looked up at me and said bitterly, "Why don't I stare at you for a while?" He threw his guitar in his case and stood up and turned away.

What did I do?

There was a tall skinny guy with long hair who played guitar and sang rock songs in Harvard Square, mostly, and along the T. He had some measure of local fame, which I know because I saw him team up with other busking regulars sometimes, and because I saw him interviewed on the local cable access station once. He was practically famous!

One day in Harvard Square I was sitting on a wall outside the Discovery Store eating my lunch when Tall Skinny stopped playing and started lecturing the crowd. We were basically stealing entertainment, he told us. We were getting his work for free, and that's wrong. That's thievery. We owed it to him to drop a few bucks in his bucket.

Can I tell you what I wanted to drop in his bucket?

I get it. I understand the frustration of putting your talent out there and getting blank stares or simpering smiles (from me) in return. I understand the weight of failure that that puts on you. Believe me, I get it.

I understand the confusion you feel when you hear Courtney Love on the radio and here you'd gone and allegedly given Kurt Cobain, um, let's say "personal favors" on his tour bus and you've got all kinds of positive local press for your music and yet here you're the one out on the street in front of fucking smug-ass Harvard and there's Courtney being exactly the same except rich. ( I heard that story about a locally well-known Boston street musician from Courtney herself at a Hole concert at the Orpheum, and no, I didn't want to know, and yes, Ms. Love's a great musician but maybe not that reliable a storyteller.)

But standing in front of people and forcing them to listen to you is not the same as getting them to hear you, and no amount of whining about it is going to change that.

I wanted to tell this story to remind myself not to be Ponytail or Tall Skinny, no matter how frustrated I become, because DUDE, I DIDN'T FORCE YOU TO PERFORM AT ME WHILE I'M WAITING FOR THE T, AND NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE MY MONEY.

Take that, bloggers!

02 May 2008

Oh, Baby! Come see the baby...you've got to see the baby!

Hey, I directed this short! It's a horror/comedy in which a threesome turns into an unfortunate foursome when Jane's pet Baby joins in the fun.

Featuring the comic talents of Amanda Tate, Ed Goodman, and Seth Beeler.

See ohbabymovie.com for more info and a higher-res version, or watch it here via YouTube:

30 April 2008

Jan Brady's Hideous Deformity




Jan Brady brought the angst and self-hate like no other moppet on TV. She was the Jacques in the sunny SoCal world of the Bradys, the reminder of the real world of teenage dismay and inward rot in the midst of all the hair-flipping hijinks. We, as sitcom viewers, did not enjoy the likes of this kind of adolescent character assassination again until that fun-free dullard Vanessa Huxtable. Thanks, Brady writers!

In the classic George Glass episode, Jan loses the affection of yet another human male to her lovely and charming sister Marcia, which naturally causes Jan to analyze herself to try to answer the existential question, "Why am I, Jan Brady, so replusive?" She thinks she finds her answer in the mirror, where she finally notices the hideous deformities on her face. Freckles.

Until I saw this episode as a kid, I had no idea that freckles were supposed to be gross. It had never occurred to me that I might want to try to rub them out with lemon (as Jan tries to, because Jan is no scientist), or at least duck my head in shame and load up on the foundation. But I knew, as everyone knew, that Jan's freckles were not the problem; Jan's black hole of a personality was the problem. Even fictional George Glass probably dumped her sooner or later.

Then one day in middle school, my lab partner suddenly said, "It'd be really cute if your freckles were just on your cheeks instead of all over your face."

Oh my lord, it's true! People think freckles are ugly! Fortunately, though, I thought my lab partner was pretty damned silly, so I decided to keep my face just as it was.

Since then I have learned that black & white photography really brings out the freckle goodness in a face. Had Jan seen herself like this, she would've immediately drowned herself in the toilet.

The middle photo is b&w with a blue filter -- look, just be glad I didn't give you the old High Contrast Blue Filter, because you might've been moved to call the infectious disease department. The right photo is with the red filter -- freckles gone! Alien perfection achieved! Jan, come over here -- I've found a solution... and send over Clark Tyson!

Jan, Jan, Jan. The other Brady kids had positive identifying characteristics; look where Jan fits in:

1. Marcia - perfect
2. Greg - self-confident
3. Peter - happy-go-lucky
4. Jan - self-hating
5. Cindy - plucky
6. Bobby - Bobby

Geez, Jan, way to deliver the schadenfreude. If there was nothing in a given episode to further erode Jan's self-esteem, it was a wasted thirty minutes.

But thank goodness for her and for the lovely Eve Plumb. Jan brought the real human doubt and the insecurity that balanced the show's cheeriness. Jan made regular kids feel better about not being Bradys. Jan made the ordinary superior.

But, seriously -- what was the shit on her face?

28 April 2008

Tower Push! Fovie Promo


Miss Menaire tried to blackmail the wrong group of women. Bye, Miss M!

25 April 2008

Kidnapped Wife! Fovie Promo


Even kidnappers like to be tidy. Out, out, damn lipstick!

23 April 2008

"Deadwood" (2004-2006)

I heard the charmingly no-nonsense David Milch interviewed on The Treatment; at Elvis's prodding, he did talk a bit about his father's rough-and-tumble and not entirely legal background, but he never did explain what gave him the balls to pitch a show about the Wild West in which the chief scumbags talk like Shakespearian seconds and the entire cast revolves around a 60-year-old English actor who isn't exactly known for his good looks.

Sounds great, Milch. We'll clear a place in the schedule for it right now!

My friend Killian insisted that "Deadwood" was a great show long before I got around to watching it. She forced me to watch part of an episode with her once, and of course it happened to be the most fellatio-heavy show in the entire history of the series. Good one, Killian. No thanks.

But fortunately I gave it another go and rented the DVDs, and I cannot believe how attached I've become to the rogues and murderers and Indian heads in boxes and corpse-eating pigs and delicate ladies stranded in the sea of filth that is the town of Deadwood. That 60-year-old Englishman turned out to be my most deepest love on the show, a character who as vile and noble and sexy and repulsive, lovable and cruel as... let's say Regan and Goneril as played by Lear. A bossman's gotta do what a bossman's gotta do.

This show is a miracle of casting and of stellar writing and plotting. And don't miss the gorgeous opening credits and theme song; the love and care that made this show extends to all corners of the production.

"Deadwood", huh? Sure, Milch. Sounds great. We've also got a pilot ready for a Custer-meets-Chekov show in which Custer tries to sell his house to Indians. And we've got a great Watergate-meets-Jane Austen show in which G. Gordon Liddy is played by Hugh Grant, and Nixon can't choose between his love of hotel theft and his devotion to his shit list.

(Bonus post convergence: 20 years after his turn in this dopey and appalling "Red Dawn", Powers Boothe shows his real stuff by swaggering around Deadwood as Cy Tolliver, who is, let's say, the Regan and Goneril as played by Gollum.)

20 April 2008

I just watched "Red Dawn" (1984) for the first time

This movie was a touching story about brotherly devotion. Also, it was a celebration of the natural beauty of the American Southwest. Finally, it was a paean to the sheer pleasure of watching teenagers massacre people.

Well done, John Milius. According to the news from the last ten years, it's like your dream has come true!

19 April 2008

Ed Begley Jr. Spans Time

If you watch Battlestar Galactica Classic on Hulu right this minute, you will see Ed Begley Jr. flying a raptor or some such, and then you will see him thirty years later during the commercial breaks, starring in a DirecTv commercial.

That's a pretty neat FTL jump of your own there, Ed!

16 April 2008

I am mortified by Dancing With the Stars

I was flipping channels a few days ago and landed on Dancing With the Stars.

Why? Why this show be like this? I no speak good after see show.

I understand the premise of this show to be that we want to watch professional dancers yell at non-professional celebrity dancers, who then dance in front of a trio of loud-talkers who give them points, and also take them points away as punishment for bad rumbas. I don't know who these judges are, but they are very animated people who seem to care deeply about dance. They are frightening.

I think watching celebrities fail at something difficult in an artistic field that is not their own is supposed to make me feel good, or vindicate my non-celebrity status, or maybe, to be more charitable and glass-slipper-half-full, make me identify with the participants, who it seems are just regl'r folk like me who take adult education classes. Except that their adult education class is televised, and they are forced to sit next to Marie Osmond. (I know that was a previous season, but I saw clips of her fainting and her hair and her big face and her chipmunk cheeked demon dolls on the news at the time and I won't forget it any time soon.)

Whatever this show is supposed to make me feel, it primarily makes me feel like hiding my face under a blanket. If I can still hear the show from under the blanket, it makes me want to press my face into the blanket until I suffocate and no longer have to hear the stress and the mugging and the pleading for votes and the clinging -- god, the clinging! -- in my dreams.

And the outfits.

I am so deeply mortified by the skits that the couples do before and after and, god knows, during their dances that I can't believe the producers manage to get people -- people who have accomplished some something in life! breathing people, with souls! -- to make those faces and paw each other and act like the least talented middle school drama troupe ever formed via a sign-up sheet in the cafeteria.

Why the mugging? I've sat and watched ballroom competitions on PBS, so I know from the tyranny of dance, and I'm familiar with the kabuki theatre of the lipstick and false eyelashes and the Vegas theatre of the showgirl outfits, but I swear I've never seen those people mug. They are all business off of the dance floor. Mugging would muss their makeup. Mugging would take muscle energy away from their lines.

Yet it is required on this show, even from perfectly dignified athletes who are game enough to give it a go with the mock-sexy faces and the exaggerated pouts, but god, I wish they wouldn't. Does being a celebrity willing to go on this show mean that you are not permitted to retain any dignity at all?

The outfits. Professional dance ladies, why butt cleavage? Why cutouts to expose hip bones? Why spangles and ribbons on bathing suits? Why the entire spinal column? The men cannot button their shirts because they must let their shaven, spray-tanned chests say Hello! to the world, I understand, but why no buttons at all, ladies?

I am mortified. No wonder I can't dance.

14 April 2008

"Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets (1954)


Do you know any little girls who own white dresses with voluminous petticoats? I know just the song they can dance to!

"Rock Around the Clock" was more or less the first rock and roll song (or let's say the first one for white people), though it didn't make much of a splash until it was used over the opening credits of the film The Blackboard Jungle in 1955 (bonus Glenn Ford connection!). It was later used in American Graffiti, and then as the theme song for the first season of "Happy Days", which is how 80s brats like me got to hear plenty of it and wonder why everyone was so goddamned apple-cheeked back then.

It's a song perfectly evocative of its time -- a brightly-colored, spit-curled era of sock hops and soda jerks -- yet timeless and inexhaustible. Whereas the likes of "Teen Angel" now sound hopelessly mired in 50s goo, this song remains as fresh and spunky as the day it was recorded. (Or, uh, re-recorded, since Haley sang a shorter version specifically for "Happy Days". And since this is rock, please feel free to read "spunky" as a double entendre).

This song works because it's rock and roll to the core: playful and dangerous, fun yet menacing. Get up and dance, dammit! Those opening drum hits -- they propel you out of your seat, but maybe straight into the fist of an angry teenager. The song travels on a great journey that takes you from happy clappy to "I think the guitarist is stalking me". You count along with Bill because you're afraid not to, but then the band winds it up and lets you go....back to their van!

Go ahead, try to listen to this swing rhythm-and-blues without tapping your foot and bopping your head. Even bad dancers can dance to this one.

Put your glad rags on and join me, honey!

09 April 2008

Homemade Superhero! Fovie Promo


Jane Chance has a brand new supertalent but a disastrous lack of superfashion sense. You try going straight from work to saving the world some time, see how easy it isn't!

07 April 2008

Marine Fashion -- lovely looks for Spring!


Downtown Culver City is the place for strapless looks for the military.

05 April 2008

Tech Babble Mystery Word of the Week Winner!

This week's TECH BABBLE MYSTERY WORD is: enterprise.

From an April 2nd ZDNet article:

The project is structured as a joint development agreement, and no money will change hands, Colin Parris, IBM's vice president for digital convergence, said in a phone interview.

"We see a need for an enterprise-ready solution that offers the same content creation capabilities but adds new levels of security and scalability," he said.

After an initial phase of using the private Second Life areas internally, IBM will let its own customers access the privately hosted regions.

"We're doing this internally, and we're building the right kind of enterprise-grade solution," Parris said.


Colin Parris, you're our winner!! Your prize is a fully scalable, top-down, multi-tiered B-to-C solution with VPN wireless capability and social networking Flash apps!

Congratul8tions!

02 April 2008

Poised! Fovie Promo



Things at the Blair household are about to change.

31 March 2008

I explain contemporary country music to you

I like country music. I don't like it ironically, and I don't like-it-but-only-Johnny-Cash-because-I saw-some-movie. I don't like it because it's funny to like Hank Williams Jr because he is a weird yelling-voiced clown with a non-clown father and a scary son (p.s. Mr. Show did a brilliant music infomercial sketch featuring C.S. Lewis Jr. singing the hits, and that made me laugh very hard for infinity because of course I read the Narnia books PLUS the Screwtape Letters and because I find Hank Williams Jr. so strange and disturbing and no, I am not and never will be ready for some football).

What? Oh...I really like it. I discovered the country music station when I was in college and needed to calm down from all that learnin' and tequila shootin' and I found the country hits to be very soothing. There was that song "Nobody", which is about a woman asking her husband whose lipstick she found, and who's perfume is in the air, and no matter what she asks, the answer is a sad, resigned, "Nobody. Just...nobody." I mean, this is life, folks. (p.s. It also always makes me think of The Family Circus, and those ghosts Ida Know and Not Me or Nobody or Jeffy's Psycho or whatever. I think one of the ghosts is Nobody? Anyway, I picture that lady's husband getting all crazy with Nobody and Ida Know and having his wife walk in and start singing that song.)

Our local country music station here in LA inexplicably changed formats one day and I was horrified. I cannot listen to emo rock hits all day, people! I do not like the disco station in the morning! I can only take so much R Kelly! Thankfully, another station took up the slack and hired a lot of the same DJs and order was restored to my life. (p.s. I still miss you, Peter Tilden!)

Country music helps me understand election results and which movies become blockbusters and where our national anxieties lie, and also my own life and dreams that I didn't even know I had. Surprise! So does pop music and hip hop and Josh Groban, so stop being a douche and admit that anyone can find anything in music if they stop letting their peer group critique their private playlists. I'm so sick of people proudly claiming to like all kinds of music, "EXCEPT country. High five!" It does not make you cool. It's like people who love to tell you how much they hate cats, just on principle. Oh, wow, you hate cats -- YOU ARE SO COOL AND NOT GAY AT ALL.

If you haven't kept up with the country hits lately, here's a primer on who's who on the radio today. It slightly incomplete, but it will help you get started:

1. Montgomery Gentry -- this is one younger guy who plays guitar and sings, and one older guy in a long black duster who acts as the hype man and carries his mic around like Freddie Mercury (though he'd KILL you with his bare hands if you implied any kinship between him and Freddie Mercury) and sings badly, but you can tell that he's proud of singing badly (and occasionally talk-singing!) because it shows what a regular man's man he is and how's he's the salt of the earth and whatnot. Their songs are not subtle. In one video, the one guy wore flared pants with MIA and POW stitched on the flares, I think in rhinestones. I mean, okay? They are great for people who hate country, because they confirm all fears of rowdy rednecks whipping mic stands around, and they are great for people who love country, because they are so unabashedly what people who hate country hate.

2. Big & Rich -- do you want a little bang in your ying yang? Well, do you? How about some zang in your zing zang? I hope you do, because Big & Rich are bringing it to you whether you like it or not. They've formed a Music Mafia to sing in your face with their atonal harmonies and randy puns, just so you can save a horse and ride a cowboy. They are a walking t-shirt slogan factory. Sometimes Rich wears a fur coat, and oh my Lord they are crazy. Crazy crafty, that's what, because they know the value of pushing the boundaries of country fans (Cowboy Troy) while simultaneously supporting the unmistakable real deal (Gretchen Wilson). One of them is tall and is called Big; the other is surnamed Rich and is called Rich. I mean, they aren't going to tax your expectations too much, folks, but you will be singing along before you realize you've even opened your mouth.

3. Carrie Underwood -- I ain't mad at ya for singing at me about Jesus and his driving powers, Carrie, because you can SANG. That song about smashing your cheating boyfriend's SUV is one of the finest of the last ten years, girlfriend. It makes me all sassy and shit.

4. Alan Jackson -- he has got to be the most boring man in country, and I betcha he's really proud of it. I mean, this is the man who was proud of not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran. Geez, dude, get a MAP.

5. Jo Dee Messina -- Unmistakable, joyous, driving-with-the-top-down voice. I love her. Although, I just realized that I don't think I've ever seen her on TV or in a magazine or anywhere. It's possible she doesn't really exist.

6. Dolly Parton -- she is so great that she has a hit right now where she chastises her own friends for coming to her and whining about their sorry lives. I mean, she straight up ridicules the friend, there's a line in there about playing a tiny violin if she had one. But Dolly is so appealing and her voice is so fabulous that she could sing about strangling people and make it sound darling. Just don't go over to her house when you're not feeling so hot.

7. Toby Keith -- I don't know. I can't explain him. He's not handsome, he did that whole weird bullying thing with the Dixie Chicks wherein he supported our troops by trampling on the freedoms that they're fighting for, and yet he claims to be a Democrat. I don't get this guy at all, but damn if he isn't talented. Sometimes he sings like a goat, but it's such a nice, distinctive goat. He writes good songs, so that even when they are annoying (the one that goes Let's Talk About Meee-ee-eee) or disturbing (the one about lynching someone and then buying your horse a drink; no, seriously, this is an actual song), they are totally catchy and fun to listen to. How does he do that? I think Toby Keith is an illusionist and is preparing to disappear us all.

8. Chris Gaines -- holy crap, that whole thing was weird. Country music is so exacting and tough on its artists that poor old calculating Garth had to invent a painfully lame persona in order to experiment a bit musically. His rock persona was like one created by a guy who has never heard rock music and only knows about it from old Rick Springfield album covers. It was hilariously odd and wrong and dumb and I love him for it. Oh, and the Garth Brooks side is all talented and stuff, but think about it: do you think he went out one night and dug a grave and buried Chris Gaines on the side of Thunder Road?

9. Shania Twain -- is a robot.

See how interesting and varied country music is? And that was off the top of my head!

24 March 2008

Test blog

Hey, dummy! I'm copying old posts over here to Blogger, so this blog is under construction -- that's why everything is so old, just like my soul. Oh no, wait -- that's "cold" and "dead", not "old". My mistake!

13 March 2008

NunSave! Fovie Promo


Three nuns. One heroine. One chance to NunSave.

10 March 2008

This cat is a terrible employee


She's not even paying attention! We here at Pajama Technologies cannot tolerate this lack of work ethic. Kitty cat, you're fired!

16 February 2008

Hello, Johns Hopkins. I have established a website.

So let's say you went to college, and your college has an Alumni Notes section in its fancy magazine that gets mailed to all alumni four times a year. Your former classmates send in announcements like "I now run the largest trauma center in the Milky Way," or "I just published my fourth Pulitzer-winning book," or perhaps "My wife and I just had triplets, which was hard to fit in to our busy schedules as justices on the Supreme Court."

Now let's say you are me. You vaguely remember receiving a card from school mentioning a reunion or homecoming or something. It had a place for you to write an update about how you just saved Asia from a meteor with your amazing physicist powers or whatever. It also had places to update basic contact info like your address and phone number.

So you scribbled in your eponymous website address, assuming that it would go into an alumni contact database or a list or something somewhere.

But you just got your fancy alumni magazine in the mail, and some helpful soul assumed that your scribbled website address was intended to be an important announcement about your life, one that you'd love to share with your fellow alumni. And this helpful soul, who maybe is a little bit evil, constructed a sentence around your url: "Courtney Lamb has established a website," and printed this sentence in the Alumni Notes.

Yes, Hopkins community. I have established a website.

It was a mighty task, but it's the kind that the rigorous Johns Hopkins University curriculum prepared me for. I am so proud. I only wish I had even more photos of me looking utterly goofy on said website.

I needed to share www.courtneylamb.com with those of you announcing job changes, marriages, birthings, and elections to the Senate. Each of us has done something life-changing.

I Have Established a Website. BEHOLD.

If you send me your phone number, I can call you every time I do something this important. You need to know.

I promise to keep my fellow JHU alumni updated on future important info, such as my favorite color (leaning towards eggshell white these days) and the hilarious antics of my cats. JHU: I have already filled out alumni notes cards with this important info; stand watch for the mailman.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

30 January 2008

Need to make a call? aka World's biggest, least convenient iPhone


You don't see many of these babies around any more. Do you need to make a call? Did you throw your cell phone in the ocean in a fit of romantic disappointment? Are you sorry now?

Jog down to Broadway and 4th in Santa Monica and, joy!, you can make that call. Don't call that person who made you drown the cell, though; this booth is too heavy to carry down to the beach.

Poor neglected phone booth! No door, missing windows, graffiti! We didn't appreciate you, boothie!

15 January 2008

BMW Isetta spotted on the loose in Santa Monica


Now THAT'S a small car. Some guy came out to Main St to get some attention by showing the lovely coffee-sipping ladies how two can fit in this tiny car. And then he yawned and slipped his arm around the back of the passenger seat....