Pretty, and Witty, and . . .

Sometimes reading or listening to the news about the endlessly new and creative attacks that fundamentalist nutjob politicians propose makes me sad.  But the internet doth give even as it takes away.

Have a Takei Friday, everyone.





P.S. I fully acknowledge that my understanding of politics is imperfect, sometimes not up to speed, and frequently characterized by an unbecoming rage.  I also (obviously) feel more qualified to talk about social issues like abortion and gay rights than fiscal matters - though I understand that financial management is kind of paramount when all is said and done, and do my best to maintain some semblance of awareness on that topic.

My Cup (of Words) Runneth Over

So far, the title of this blog has been partially disingenuous, considering its content.  I do use words here, but I could just as easily have named the blog “UseYourYoutube.”  There are a number of potential reasons for this, some better than others, but either way I do recognize the fact of the situation.

However, (and who didn’t see that word coming?) this weekend I had the rare and wonderful experience of spending an uninterrupted 36 hours with some of the nearest and dearest friends from different parts of the last decade and a half of my life.  I don’t think I can actually convey in words what this meant to me, and I’m not sure I did a good job of conveying it to my friends during the weekend, but I can say that it was . . . just  tremendous.  Although my weekend ended somewhat anticlimactically with some serious gastric distress, the easy rhythm of being surrounded by amazing, familiar, loving people – and the attendant sense of deep gratitude for such – will surely be my major takeaway.   In short, I had a weekend-long Friend-Contact-High™.  It was pretty cool.

On the way home from this adventure, I was thrilled to discover a fabulous aftereffect of the FCH phenomenon, as it will henceforth be known.  I am not a very good car-rider to begin with, and the aforementioned gastric difficulties (happily self-inflicted, I should note) persuaded me that strolling the final mile home in the fresh air would be a better choice than spending any further time in a car, even to chat with the very good pal who was driving.  E was out doing chores in the vicinity of my drop-off point, so we met up, and then he took a cab home carrying my suitcase and the many awkward/heavy things he bought at Target (seriously, how many bags of soil do we really need?).  I walked the rest of the way to the apartment, enjoying the sunshine and occasionally stopping to smell a rose - as I am wont to do.

While I was walking, I started doing what I always do when I’m alone and unoccupied: telling the story of myself, to myself.  This is something I assume everyone does to some degree, though the details and scope may vary - from telling the story of a work day to the story of a relationship to the story of one's whole character.  In my own story-telling, I tend to take a relatively long view. I recognize that such stories can have limited utility, and when shared can be really obnoxious, so I’ve been keeping them more to myself these days.  But as I was walking, words and stories and ideas came flooding through me in a way that they haven’t done much, of late.  I felt eager, even anxious, to get home and write it all down.  I can’t remember the last time I felt so motivated to get home and write.   Being with people who knew me so well, and who I knew so well, for that amount of time (frequently in a hot tub, with substantial servings of wine) opened some aperture in me that had been slowly contracting without my knowledge or consent.  It felt exciting, but not entirely foreign, and I enjoyed the unusual sense of urgency.

As I approached our building, it occurred to me that this feeling is probably the genesis of all the ubiquitous ensemble dramedies/cinematic circle jerks that litter the television and movie landscape.  Gathering a group of friends in one place with no real responsibilities aside from telling stories to each other really does create a synergy that is distinct from everyday and one-on-one interactions.  I still think ensemble dramedies are almost uniformly clunkers, because they are so painfully self-aware (and they so frequently, and inexplicably, end with a pity fuck – e.g. The Big Chill and St. Elmo’s Fire).  By the third ham-fisted speech I’m always reminded of this exchange from Anchorman:

Ron Burgundy: We are laughing and we are very good friends. Good buddies sharing a special moment...
Brian Fantana: Don't say anything Ron; just let it happen.
Ron Burgundy: ...laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we'll look back on this with much fondness.
Brian Fantana: Yeah, yeah.

But I have to admit that the Ron Burgundy mindset here is kind of my bread and butter.  I can absolutely understand how screenwriters get FCH after a weekend like I just had and can’t resist the urge to turn it into a self-indulgent movie like Four Seasons. 

I didn’t write a movie today, but I did write a blog post.  Whether that’s better or worse is debatable, but it’s certainly cheaper.

I Can Call You Betty

Sometimes instead of going to bed at night I watch this video four or five times in a row.



When I was a kid, I didn't know what Paul Simon looked like, so I thought the non-Chevy Chase guy was another comedian. I still think Paul's funnier, although I deeply enjoy every time Chevy drops his glass through the bongo stand.

Monday

I have not yet gotten the hang of weekend posting. That's probably a good thing because it means that I was out actually having a weekend rather than sitting in front of a screen writing about it. I'm sure the latter situation will be upon me soon enough.

Either way, I enjoyed my active weekend. I got to celebrate some important milestones with good friends (birthdays, weddings, woo woo!). It's not my place to blog about other people's big events really but I will say that 5-lb gummy bears and Dr. Seuss readings were involved. Also booze, bagels, sparkling conversation, and FABULOUS outfits. High fives all around!

On Sunday E and I took our moms to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. We got torso-sized bags of kettle corn, ate mediocre gyros, watched a sheepdog herding demonstration, fed alpacas, and generally took in the atmosphere. We also came away with 18 new plants for the roof garden, including six tomato plants (to add to the four that are already potted and fruiting), six or so new pepper variants including habaneros, poblanos, jalapenos and thai chilis, and some miscellaneous others (eggplant, purple basil). PLUS some awesome new greeting cards and enough gorgeous pink yarn to embark on my first-ever knit sweater this fall.

E just bought a fancy new camera so maybe there will be pictures later. In the meantime just imagine shorn alpacas standing around looking awkward, like geeks in middle school. Go ahead, it will make your Monday a lot better.

Listen, this was going to happen sooner or later

Happy Friday, everyone!  I have a very busy and exciting weekend coming up.  I hope you get to have the fun and/or relaxing weekend that you require. 


This is not the video that you think it is.

Desire

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

- E.B. White

April Mix

Some of you may know that I have a longstanding tradition of making myself a mix every month.  It started in college, when I actually made CDs, but now I just collect songs on one of the several Apple products which have conquered my life.  I've been doing this with considerable consistency for over 10 years now.

The purpose of these mixes is both aesthetic and autobiographical.  Creating a fresh mix each month pushes me to seek out (mostly) new music, which is exciting and gratifying in and of itself AND (let’s be honest) it makes me feel hip.  (Is there anything less hip than using the word “hip”?  I think not.)  On top of that, each mix also becomes a record of the events in my life for a given month.  I pull in songs that are relevant to the month’s events: concerts, new releases and new discoveries, plus songs that are lyrically relevant to my many and varied feeeeeeelings.  And, because I listen to the mix as I’m assembling it, the music becomes a soundtrack for my everyday life during that month.  I have a strangely strong music-to-location memory, such that a certain song can remind me for years afterward of walking down a particular street or driving on a particular stretch of road.  This is great for me, because my regular memory is kind of crap.

Anyway, here’s my April mix.  Profound it ain’t, but I love it just as I love all of my mix-children.

	Artist	Title	Album	Notes
1	Robyn	Indestructible	Body Talk	I held off on Robyn for a while out of pure contrariness, but the guys from Sound Opinions convinced me with this one song.
2	The Jackson 5	ABC	Anthology: Jackson 5	Rediscovered during wedding playlist preparation.
3	Glasser	Apply	Ring	My newest fave discovery, also via Sound Opinions.
4	Television	See No Evil	Marquee Moon	An awesome friend introduced me to Television over a decade ago (thanks Kerry!); I revisited this song recently after it was featured on This American Life.
5	The Foundations	Build Me Up Buttercup	The Very Best of the Foundations	Also rediscovered during wedding playlist prep.
6	Ce Ce Peniston	Finally	100% Pure Dance	I don't remember why I downloaded this one; I was drunk.
7	Robyn	Dancing on My Own	Body Talk	The Robyn seal has been broken.
8	The Kooks	Ooh La	Inside In/Inside Out	Found this when "shopping" in my own music collection.  If you were the one who gave it to me, thanks!
9	Bryan Adams	Heaven	So Far So Good	Don't hate.
10	Glasser	Plane Temp	Ring	Seriously, CHECK OUT GLASSER.
11	Adele	Make You Feel My Love	19	Thanks to Essence for sharing this album.
12	Tune-Yards	Bizness	Bizness - Single	Again, credit goes to Sound Opinions.  Awesome music video, see below.
13	Paul Simon	Hearts and Bones	Hearts and Bones	A chronicle of Simon's love affair with Carrie Fisher.  The best quote ever about that pairing, by Mike Nichols as quoted in Fisher's amazing memoir Wishful Drinking: "You were two flowers, no gardener."
14	Daft Punk	Aerodynamic (Daft Punk Remix)	Daft Club - The Remixes	Thanks to Mariele.
15	Luscious Jackson	Naked Eye	Naked Eye	What can I say, this song holds up.

As a bonus, here's the awesome/bizarre video for Tune-Yards' "Bizness."

Field Trip!

This weekend E and I were in Boston for his sister's senior recital. She did a fabulous job, and I am pleased to have come away from the concert with a favorite bassoon piece. (Who knew?) We also spent some time with E's family and did a suitable amount of napping, brunching and sightseeing.

View of the Boston waterfront from the ICA

At the Institute for Contemporary Art we saw the original artwork, conceived by David Byrne and executed by Jimmy DeSana, that became the cover for the Talking Heads "More Songs About Buildings and Food."  It's seven feet tall and pretty creepy in person, actually.

Boston was very pretty, but too chilly in April for my taste. But, by traveling north we did get to go back in time to see spring blossom all over again. I must have stopped to smell lilacs a dozen times.

I know these aren't lilacs.  But they are pretty. So there.

After a pleasant lunch on Saturday, we saw a couple taking wedding photos in Boston Common.  They looked lovely and were, presumably, perfectly nice people, but I was kind of horrified by the FIVE-PERSON cadre they had following them around with fancy cameras and tripods.  Including a videographer with a SteadyCam.  Random tourists were taking their picture, assuming they were famous - I wanted to explain that they were just rich and maybe a little touched in the head, but I kept my mouth shut and looked at the ducks.

I am a grown up.  Really.

Boston also seems to cultivate an unusually dysfunctional relationship between drivers and pedestrians . . . and, as a DC resident, I think I know my way around dysfunctional transportation relations. At many intersections, a "Walk" sign will never appear, regardless of the light cycle, unless a button is pushed - and oftentimes not even then. Another set of intersections have the same setup, except without a button. The result of this is that Boston pedestrians are inveterate jaywalkers, while Boston drivers are lulled into an inflated sense of self-importance. Add into the mix a tendency among drivers to clip curbs and you have the makings of a lot of transportation drama. Maybe the weather sufficiently deters pedestrians from braving the streets much of the year, so drivers don't have to worry too much, but E and I were not thrilled about the situation.  Still, we survived to fight another day!

Hello Jell-O

via Jezebel

I gave up Jell-O (along with Kraft mac & cheese) a few years ago after getting on a real-food kick via my man Michael Pollan.  Still love the stuff, though, in theory if not in practice.  Leave it to youtube to satisfy my theoretical (and aesthetic) Jell-O desires.

Give the People What They Want

E and I finally sent out our wedding invites last week.  Neither of us is really into fancy paper and we didn't have professional invites in the budget so we did the whole thing ourselves.  It worked out quite well!  We're lucky to have similar aesthetics (modern, colorful and simple) and complimentary DIT wishes (me: awesome words; E: spray paint!)  It also didn't hurt to have most of a ream of white cardstock just lying around, because I am a genius and cannot read labels when buying printer paper at Staples.*

We probably could have made the response cards out of cardstock as well, but I was nervous about USPS rules (and unable to measure .007 inches to be certain) so we bought pre-perforated cards from Staples.  As you can see, E spray-painted them in four different colors, which was a big pain in the ass for him but turned out AMAZING.

Despite these successes, I do have a confession.  The poem I chose, e.e. cummings' "love is a place,"

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds 

is slightly inaccurately quoted on the invite.  Though an American poet, cummings must have been feeling his expat oats when he wrote this one because used the British spelling of "skilfully" in line 9.  Perhaps the omitted "L" is intended to lighten and psychologically shorten the word so we can move on to the more crucial "curled."  Then again, a quick survey indicates that he generally preferred the one-L spelling, as he uses it in several other poems - indicating that it was perhaps more a lexical default than a conscious creative choice.

In any case, SCREW YOU, CUMMINGS, I added the "L." Apparently I am more worried about people thinking I typo-ed my own damn invitations than I am about integrity to his artistic vision.  It is probably convenient that I don't work in the literature field anymore, because whatever faith in literature I had that hadn't been destroyed by my own laziness, self-critical tendencies, or ongoing brain-atrophy just got dealt another blow.  On the other hand, I still have enough English major blowhard in me to plaster a big ol' e.e. cummings poem on our wedding invites . . . so there's that . . .


*We have still not bought actual printer paper.  Airplane passes, Groupons, maps - they all get printed on cardstock.  For over a year now.  I am nothing if not a lazy bastard.