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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Needle! Fovie Promo

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

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!