Tumbling

I'm hanging out over here for a little while as a blogging experiment. I will do my best to put comments on it. For some reason it feels more welcoming -- and the dumb thing is, I think it's because the edit post screen in Blogger is BRIGHT EFFING WHITE and sort of makes me feel like I'm in a doctor's office. I just realized that. Memo to UI designers.

Let's get totally out of control tonight.

Thank you, internet/T-shirt gods.

(via)

More JS.

More. My dad told me to watch this. He's feeding the obsession. I should start a new blog. It could be called "Segelize It." Ha!

Jason Segel and NPH sing Les Mis.

Enjoy. That is all.

Inanity

I'm really spaced out today due to work and also I went off antidepressants and the withdrawal is kicking in (oh yes, I was on them, fun fact, internet), so I am really dizzy and having sort of strange out-of-body twitches. So I am in bullet point mode.

• Yesterday at Walgreens I bought these new "Tic Tac Chill" things. They're larger versions of Tic Tacs and they have no sugar, and they are freaking DELICIOUS. I am so glad I bought them on a whim. Basically you put one in your mouth and get that awesome white-Tic-Tac flavor, and then after a little while it dissolves in a little frenzy of sweetness. To quote Dan, "it's like a little climax." With very little fear of being judged, I completely agree with him.
• I am reading John Green's "An Abundance of Katherines," which I bought a while ago on a Lindsayism recommendation, and started reading since Casey introduced me to the awesomeness that is John Green's blog. While I am only two chapters in, I loved the dedication: "To my wife, Sarah Urist Green, anagrammatically: Her great Russian / Grin has treasure -- /A great risen rush. / She is a rut-ranger; / Anguish arrester; / Sister; haranguer; / Treasure-sharing, / Heart-reassuring / Signature Sharer / Easing rare hurts." It's accompanied by this Roth quote (from The Human Stain): "But the pleasure isn't owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you."
• I was listening to a "This American Life" this morning (the Ten Commandments; I'm only partway through but I love Shalom Auslander to pieces) and it reminded me of the one that Peattie and I listened to on our drive to LA a few weeks ago. It's called "What I learned from Television" and the best part about it is this little segue bit when Ira Glass reveals that he loves the OC. Seriously. Ira Glass. The OC. It's almost as mind-blowing as seeing Sasha Frere-Jones stoned on Pot Psychology. (NSFW, obvi.) The best part about it is that a) Ira Glass admits that he cried at the OC finale and that b) to explain the character Taylor Townsend, he says she is "pretty much exactly like Paris on the Gilmore Girls". I bet he has a soul-absorbing crush on Jason Segel, too.
  

Ok. Enough for now.

Boys of My Youth.. part 1

Last night I finished my book club book for this month, "The Boys of My Youth." I won't get too into it since I want to save that for after my book club, but I really enjoyed it. It wasn't what I expected and yet it was still fantastic. Very well written, shocking, sad, and yet comforting, too. And familiar despite the fact that in many, many, ways the author's life is very different from my own. But I loved this last bit (not entirely a plot spoiler, but it is sort of a spiritual-ending-of-the-book spoiler, so as a warning -- Sarah, I'm looking at you), when she and her best friend from middle school are listening to a voicemail from a new man in her life:

"Hi, Jo Ann, this is X," he says and then leaves a long, rambling, totally coherent message and hangs up. Oh man. He's shimmering in my living room like a genie released from a bottle. I don't know whether to faint or kill myself. Elizabeth laughs unbecomingly. I put both hands around my own neck. We do our silent screaming routine. We are no longer bored.

I feel pretty good about the women in my life these days, and I think it's in small part to moments like that one. I guess maybe all of us feel that way, at least sometimes, but maybe it's all the time, and maybe it never goes away, and I'll feel that way when I'm 50 as much as I do now. I think that is comforting... it's sort of scary, but comforting, just because I'm not alone.

More on this later.

This is what I mean.

Sarah: have you checked bwe today?

Sent at 2:56 PM on Monday

me: no

Sarah: omg

me: ?

i am lookign at it now

Sarah: animals

pressed

against

glass

Memo to David Plouffe & Barack Obama

Dude. I love you. I have donated. A lot, actually, considering my economic situation at the moment (somehow spent away my yearly bonus, my stimulus check and my tax refund within the span of like two months). I believe in the whole grass-rootsiness of your campaign, even to the point where I've forgiven you for backing out of public financing despite your embrace of it in principle. I'm finding it hard to forgive you for never mailing me my T-shirt that I bought back in January, even though at the time I wrote it off as just another $40 worth of a donation... or for having a really crappy customer service phone line. I am also pretty skeptical that you will ever mail me my "limited edition" DVD of your "More Perfect Union" speech, even though I donated before your "deadline" (read: end of the month, for reporting purposes, obvi) for that and before my friend Peattie did, and he got his DVD two weeks ago. Plus, I'm pretty pissed that you decided that the death penalty is ok, even if you only think it's ok in extreme cases, and I'm also pissed that you backed out of the fight on the FISA bill. So now I'm especially pissed that you keep sending me, every day, e-mails urging me to donate now! in order to get another "limited edition" T-shirt. So. Stop. Thank you.

We read blogs.

Sarah wrote her own post about Friday night here. It's much more coherent (and, arguably, more honest) than mine was, due in part to her lack of a blogger hiatus and also to the fact that I mostly just wanted to talk about Jason Segel.

It is highly entertaining, and awesome, that I have a friend here in the city who is just as plugged in to ridiculous interwebby incestuousness as I am. Someday we'll break through.

Word Overload

Well I watched a lot of TV this weekend. It was all actually a result of what happen Friday night, which was essentially accidental drunkenness. Sarah and I went to Zeitgeist right after work on Friday, split a pitcher, and then rolled up to Zoe's house where she cooked us a fabulous meal -- Parma ham and melon, caprese, and polenta cakes with a sort of veggie-mess-of-delicious-onion-and-mushroom-and-garlic-saute on top. A brief dance party at her place (where Sarah and I spent most of our time trying to perfect the Peattie dance) led to a trek to our favorite ground zero of non-divey dive bars, the Lone Palm, which is conveniently yet occasionally unfortunately located exactly halfway between Zoe's house and my own. We adjourned to my place for drunk munchies (although, since I have been watching what I eat, the available snacks consisted of a salami stolen from Dan, rice cakes, Laughing Cow cheese, and graham crackers. Seriously) and Arrested Development and all fell asleep on the futon. Morning started with each of us wondering exactly how we had ended up in such a state, and then Zoe and Ace and I went to Bar Tartine for brunch. Ace and I promptly returned home and back to the futon, where we watched a full disc of Undeclared and then adjourned for naps -- and then after that we started the next disc, which I finished on my own. At 9pm I faced the world briefly, renting the third disc and purchasing a very strange assortment of food at the bodega -- a Cup-O-Noodle, pickles, chocolate milk, and sour apple rings. I should clarify that I have not eaten Cup-O-Noodle since college, and damn, was it salty and delicious. I also ate it with a salad! Go me. Anyway, I finished Undeclared, which was only alright, but had enough cute moments to carry me through, and also led me to develop a weird crush on Seth Rogen with glasses. Yeah, I know. It's ok though, since Jason Segel continues to be number one. There is one episode where Lizzie, the main girl in the show, has sex with Adam Sandler, and is all worried to tell her boyfriend Eric (hrm, Jason Segel) about it. When she does, he's super thrilled for her, and my comment to Ace was that Adam Sandler was on her "list" -- i.e. the list of five celebrities that you are allowed to sleep with (given the chance) even if you are in a relationship. This may be some freakish invention of my generation but I know a lot of people who have lists. I am stating now that Jason Segel is on my list, although I don't know if I can really have a list if I'm not dating anyone, but perhaps it's more of a disclaimer: "Be prepared to share second-degree cooties with someone who wrote himself a movie role where he is fully, frontally nude, and also is obsessed with muppets." Um, ok, stopping now given the utter improbability of all of this.

Anyway, as it happens the Adam Sandler appearance in "Undeclared" inspired me to rent and watch "50 First Dates," which is actually very cute although totally ridiculous and unfortunately still riddled with awful Adam Sandler movie gags (you know, Rob Schneider's entire being, a walrus puke joke in the first ten minutes, an ambiguously female/male person making sexual comments). I subjected Ace to this movie just two days after subjecting her to "Definitely, Maybe," which is cuter and has less ick factor, and I have a girl crush on Isla Fisher. Then! We watched an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" on one of those illegal movie and TV episode aggregator websites.

(Perhaps you may be detecting a trend, which is that I've watched a LOT of TV lately.)

I'll wrap this up now since I'm sure it's boring, but the last thing I wanted to say is that yesterday morning Ace and I (Ace was sick this weekend, and I was first hungover and then lazy, so we were partners in laze crime) watched "The Bourne Ultimatum." I'd seen the first two movies and while I liked the first one a lot, the second one was kind of a blur to me and I didn't remember it at all. The third movie, however, was really good. Like, really good. I know they always say it's non-stop action, blah blah, but it really is, and it's super tense and only slightly hard to follow. Plus, Joan Allen kind of kicks ass, and this movie brings Bourne and Nicky (Julia Stiles) closer to getting it on, which I have been rooting for all along since I love Julia Stiles. In fact, for that reason alone I hope they make a fourth movie.

Related anecdote: When I was a kid, I remember my mom giving me "Sweet Thursday" to read and telling me that I would like it because there's "a little bit of romance in it." It was my introduction to Steinbeck -- I read that before "Cannery Row" -- and I love that my mom pulled that sneaky middle-school teacher trick to get me to read real literature instead of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book for the twentieth time. When you're a kid, you really don't want your parents to use "there's romance in it" as a persuasive tactic, because, ew, they are your parents, and for some reason we're all raised to pretend that we aren't interested in sex when we're little, but the truth is we're totally fascinated by it. And the funny thing is, I still think I'm like that with books and movies, hence half the tension in "Bourne Ultimatum" for me stemming from this chase scene where Nicky and Bourne are separated and being pursued by an assassin, and I was terrified that the killer would get to Nicky before Bourne could, and then they could never get it on. Seriously, I said this aloud. I am such a damn girl.

Alright. Enough for now. I miss blogging. Sorry for the logorrhea.

I hope and I pray for Hester to get just one more A

I spent half of last week trying to finish "The Music Man" on DVD -- yes, I own it on DVD -- and as a result I had the Music Man on the brain. I had a serious moment where I serenaded Ace with "Sadder but Wiser" and realized how totally effing bizarre that song is. Sort of scandalous or maybe sexist except that the whole movie is a satire, at least parts of it are, and so I take all that in stride. I happen to think that it's one of the best musicals ever, although I admit I'm not a huge fan of musicals in general, but apparently it won the Tony over "West Side Story" back in the day. It's highly cheesy but I love it to pieces, I suspect because it feels somehow familial. My grandparents taped it off of channel 13 when I was a kid (channel 13 became, and maybe was at the time, UPN, imagine that), and one of the kids in the movie (the little blond boy who dances and pushes the library cart around) apparently lived down the street from my parents. Plus, my grandpa was from Iowa, so somehow I imagined that this gave me some kind of personal stake in the movie. Either way, I had a grand old time watching it the other day and was just struck, not surprisingly, with the urge to watch "Sadder but Wiser" again on YouTube, an urge primarily stemming from my wondering whether it was actually on YouTube, which it is, and which in retrospect is not surprising. Enjoy.

This made me miss being an English major.

“Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ ” was the formula of the movement that Pound invented, in 1912: Imagism. In the Imagist model, the writer is a sculptor. Technique consists of chipping away everything superfluous in order to reveal the essential form within. “It took you ninety-seven words to do it,” Pound is reported to have remarked to a young literary aspirant who had handed him a new poem. “I find it could have been managed in fifty-six.” He claimed that his best-known short poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” took a year and a half to write, and that he had cut it down from thirty lines:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The form “made new” here is, of course, the haiku: two images juxtaposed to evoke a sensation—in this case, according to Pound, the sensation of beauty. It’s important to recognize, though, that the subject of the poem is not “these faces”; the subject is “the apparition.” (Otherwise, the first three words would be superfluous, subject to the Imagist razor.) The faces are not what matters. What matters is the impression they make in the mind of a poet. That is where the work of association takes place. This is what poets do: they connect an everyday x with an unexpected y.

(from The New Yorker, June 9. Also, further proof that you should always read all of The New Yorker, even if you think an article will bore you, as I thought with Pound because, come on, Pound.)

On freckles in literature

Forgive me this indulgence as a freckled person, but I'm re-reading "Middlesex" now and I forgot how damn good the whole part with the Obscure Object is, partly (for me) because of this description of the first time Callie sees her, which is the best description I think I've read of a freckled person. It doesn't make me feel vain and it's not really flattering even, and considering the entire drama of Callie's relationship with the Obscure Object I really don't know if I should be so in love with this passage, but dammit if Eugenides isn't a really captivating writer for me sometime, perhaps especially as he describes people of my kind:

Part of my interest was scientific, zoological. I'd never seen a creature with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, originating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe. There were clusters of freckles on her forearms and wrists, an entire Milky Way spreading across her forehead, even a few sputtering quasars flung into the wormholes of her ears.

Since we're in English class, let me quote a poem. Gerard Manley Hopkin's "Pied Beauty," which begins, "Glory be to God for dappled things." When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating int he milk-white skin, the gold highlights int he strawberry hair. It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.

This is ultimate vanity, actually, but not the kind that stems from me thinking that the Obscure Object and I have something in common here. It's the kind where I sit around and feel vaguely envious of a fictional creature for having tons of freckles but not so many that they blend together the way mine do. Stopping now, and focusing on how I just really like this part and, in fact, have felt the entire last third of this book lift itself from "it's alright" to "it's captivating." I started re-reading this because my book club was reading it, and the first time I read it I was only mildly appreciative. I thought maybe on second read it would be different, and the first third of the book is indeed fantastic. It slows a bit in the middle, I think, but at least so far the end is defying my memory of the first time around. I'll report back later when I'm finished.

Project Jigsandioffonado

I'm running around a bit this morning but last weekend deserves a mention. Peattie and I drove down to my parents' house in Whittier Friday night for a whirlwind weekend at home for me. Saturday, we went to (the new) Father's Office in LA with Casey and her boyfriend Bob, where we ate the best burgers ever and I had an Alesmith ESB and a Rogue Nut Brown. Then after a brief time lounging around my house, we drove with my parents down to San Diego to visit the new Toronado that opened down there a few weeks ago. There we had even more awesome beer and a lot of great conversation, including a debate about whether to turn my room at home into a library and proof that your parents can always surprise you. Peattie noted that we got some great quote candidates for "Best Quotes of 200gr8". I'll write this for JJ's benefit and say that I had a Port Brewing "Ruby Black" porter, part of a Carnegie 2006 porter (my dad's favorite beer), a Port "Hop 15," and then a Russian River Damnation. Peattie had a lot more than that, but three and a half beers was plenty for me and we all fell asleep in the car except for my mom, who stoically drove the entire way back from SD. Sunday was a nice brunch of baked apples and Belgian waffles, and a long slog through the Sunday crossword puzzle, before it was off north again for a long, but beautifully sunsetted, drive. For a harrowing hour or so, we listened to Game 5 of the Lakers-Celtics, which (thankfully) ended well for me. The radio station we found (after a long search and Peattie saying "fuck baseball" no less than three times, to my actual shock) was from Fresno, so when we cut over to the 152 heading west, it started to get verrrry fuzzy and we almost didn't get to hear the last two minutes of the game. That panic only contributed, as you can imagine, to the panic related to the Lakers' slim four-point lead.

So, as usual, a nice trip home reminded me of several things I want or need in my life. (We were talking at one point about our companies' mission statements and I referred to Google's "Ten Things Google Knows to be True." It's kind of like that.) I forget how much I love warm weather. It was hot as hell Sunday and on the drive back, but completely lovely. I remembered how good it feels to spend Sunday morning lounging around a sunny house, doing a crossword puzzle and reading (if only our living room got some sunshine). And as lame as it seems, doing crosswords with people is so much better than doing them alone. A good plain cup of coffee can make your morning.

I think it's almost time for a Summer Manifesto.

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Oh yes. While I'm MIA blogwise, please feel free to check out my shared items. All my non-work related thoughts at work have gone into these, which are the most I can do extracurricularly this week but also the least I can do to maintain my sanity. I think you can see some of the state of my brain by the one-word comments I've sunk to.

Hello for now.

Oh man, what a week. I don't know when the next time is I'll manage to catch a breath. I hate being a shitty blogger, especially so soon after I promised to start a new blog, but with work the way it is this week, and, frankly, with my mind the way it is this week, I just can't focus enough to write much. Work has suddenly gotten a little frantic, partly due to a couple of days offsite and partly due to my boss being on vacation and partly due to God knows what usual magic goes into the insanity of this place. I've forgotten a couple of things lately which I really hate doing. Outside of work I've been busy as usual, although moderately so. I made a vow to myself and my nutritionist to stop drinking on weeknights (exception: very special occasions, so I'm really aiming for not drinking 3 nights a week, which sounds like not very hard except that I'm used to having at least one beer or something nearly every day, embarrassingly), so that's toned down the outside-of-work shenanigans (in the two days since I made said vow). That said, I've been slightly busier of late thanks to the NBA finals which I'm actually following, in a complete bandwagon leap to Lakers fandom. (Disclaimer: Having grown up in LA, and with a Lakers fan father, I think my leap is justified.) I've actually watched every game so far.

This is more of a check-in and a promise to write more when things have calmed down -- I am driving down to LA and San Diego this weekend with Peattie, but I have planted "DO NOT PLAN" nights on my calendar next week for some down time, so the calm is in sight, albeit not soon enough -- and also just a complete random plug for my participation in the San Francisco crafty scene. Elizabeth and I went to the Lotta Jansdotter printing party at the Craft Gym last Saturday, and while we were printing our linen swatches, we got our photo snapped, apparently by an Apartment Therapy blogger. So here we are on their site. (She is the one with the little pink tank peeking out from underneath a brown shirt.)

The plan for calmness also includes plans for more crafting.

A sample conversation (from my work chat!)

Kim's new status message - going just a little bit crazy 1:09 PM

me: i am going a lot crazy

i think maybe i should have all hormones removed surgically from my body. do you think there is some kind of medical procedure for that??

After I sent that message I had this moment where I was worried suddenly I had IM'd the wrong person. Thank God it was Kim, one of at least a dozen people at whom I spew dramatic ridiculousness every day.

Out of sight, Offsite

You may have noticed my blog lacks post this week. I have an "offsite" for work today (well, I had one today) and tomorrow, so I am not glued to my computer as usual. That, and tomorrow night I'm helping host a Belizean dinner party, and tonight I am going to watch (on TiVo) the Lakers versus the Celtics, and the rest of this week I've been pretty insanely busy, as usual. Not to mention, I've even been busy at work thanks to the shortened work week. Shocking, I know. So this is merely an apology for the lack of entertaining and self-referential posts. It's rather disappointing that I've been so busy during the week that Obama finally won the nomination, since I have a lot of thoughts on the matter and no time to write about them. So consider this a promise to be back in full force later on, next week or this weekend, once I've had a chance to catch my breath (and I'm not counting the workshop on meditation I had in my conference today).

Demographics

Awesome graphic on the New York Times front page right now of how different demographic groups in different states voted for Clinton or Obama. Go! Now!

The mundanity of your own life...

I was particularly struck by this quote from this video about a couple (journalists) who spent a day less than 15 feet away:

"The hardest part, I think, is the recognition of the mundanity of your own life. It's all very well to have a mundane life when you're just living it yourself. You know, the fact that you wanna go get up and Xerox something the fact that you, you know, wanna go grab another cup of coffee. And that's fine when you're doing it in your own mind, but when someone else is observing you doing it, you realize, what a waste."

It reminded me of Friday, when Pablo hung out with me while I worked from home. Even when I wasn't explicitly working, he had to sit there and watch me check e-mail, flip back and forth between chat windows, browse my Google Reader, buy a concert ticket online, etc. It made me feel foolish, for lack of a better word. I felt silly when he had to wait a bit longer for me to put sugar in my coffee. All these things aren't actually big deals, but they are sort of strange little mundane parts of everyday life that you don't think about unless someone else is around, reminding you.