I posted recently about Sarah Silverman f*cking Matt Damon.
Now it turns out Jimmy Kimmel is f*cking Ben Affleck (in grand fashion).
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Amazing Stories
Does anybody else remember the TV series Amazing Stories? It ran from 1985-1987. It was a Steven Spielberg creation. Each week featured an independent story and included guest stars like Harvey Keitel, Gregory Hines, Kevin Costner, Keifer Sutherland...Dom DeLuise, Gary Coleman...all the great actors of our time.
I remember the episodes brimming with drama and mystery. They were like television storytime crack. My family eagerly gathered around each Sunday evening to watch them. The theme music still excites me. Through the years, the series has come up in conversation. The one episode our family always remembers featured a WW2 plane damaged in battle such that the landing gear was broken and the gunner was trapped down below. The gunner was a likeable daydreamy lad, if maybe soft and wimpy. He ended up saving the day by frantically drawing huge puffy cartoon wheels on the plane; they appeared when it landed and everybody lived. Magical.
My parents gave my brother and me the first season on DVD for Christmas. Sadly the two episodes I've watched have been COMPLETELY LAME. In No Day at the Beach, a sweet but dim and unworldly WW2 soldier is witnessed by his squad heroically killing enemies after an amphibious assault on Italy, thereby saving their lives, only to realize afterward that he actually died before they got off the boat you guys, omg, it was his ghost! In the so-bad-it's-good Hell Toupee, a toupee crawls from one person's head to another compelling them to murder lawyers.
I am disappointed. I declare a moratorium on revisiting childhood loves. They will only be tainted by adult cynicism and sophistication.
This also applies to food. I ate some Cheese Whiz recently. Turns out it's gross.
I remember the episodes brimming with drama and mystery. They were like television storytime crack. My family eagerly gathered around each Sunday evening to watch them. The theme music still excites me. Through the years, the series has come up in conversation. The one episode our family always remembers featured a WW2 plane damaged in battle such that the landing gear was broken and the gunner was trapped down below. The gunner was a likeable daydreamy lad, if maybe soft and wimpy. He ended up saving the day by frantically drawing huge puffy cartoon wheels on the plane; they appeared when it landed and everybody lived. Magical.
My parents gave my brother and me the first season on DVD for Christmas. Sadly the two episodes I've watched have been COMPLETELY LAME. In No Day at the Beach, a sweet but dim and unworldly WW2 soldier is witnessed by his squad heroically killing enemies after an amphibious assault on Italy, thereby saving their lives, only to realize afterward that he actually died before they got off the boat you guys, omg, it was his ghost! In the so-bad-it's-good Hell Toupee, a toupee crawls from one person's head to another compelling them to murder lawyers.
I am disappointed. I declare a moratorium on revisiting childhood loves. They will only be tainted by adult cynicism and sophistication.
This also applies to food. I ate some Cheese Whiz recently. Turns out it's gross.
Knock Knock. Who's there? Middle Age.
Behold a conversation between my Gentleman Friend and a Friend with whom he used to party really hard a lot until the break of dawn:
Gentleman Friend: Hey man! Great to run into you.
Friend: Yeah man! What have you been up to?
Gentleman Friend: Not a lot. I subscribed to a CSA box [Fn1], it's awesome, I love it, last week I got a ton of kale and chard and apples and pears and potatoes and also purple cauliflower!!!
Friend: Sweet. I moved in with my girlfriend. We might get a second cat.
[Fn1] CSA = Community Sustained Agriculture
Gentleman Friend: Hey man! Great to run into you.
Friend: Yeah man! What have you been up to?
Gentleman Friend: Not a lot. I subscribed to a CSA box [Fn1], it's awesome, I love it, last week I got a ton of kale and chard and apples and pears and potatoes and also purple cauliflower!!!
Friend: Sweet. I moved in with my girlfriend. We might get a second cat.
[Fn1] CSA = Community Sustained Agriculture
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Parents.
I make fun of them a lot on here. I can't help it. They do a lot of funny things. But I also think they're awesome and I feel lucky I got such good ones and I love them to pieces. Look at the cuteness!!!
That's them on the Golden Gate Bridge last weekend. I'd been sick for a few weeks, and it was a nice weekend, and when they left it made me surpringly emotional. They love me in a completely unselfish way, nobody but one's parents do that, and I watched them sacrifice financially for us growing up, and it was always clear we were their whole life, my dad worked his ass off but never mentioned it, and my mom has endless patience and cheer, and they're getting so OLD!, and soon my mom will stop being beautiful and my dad will stop being strong, and they're going to die, and one will die before the other, and the remaining one will be lonely because they're still in love and I catch them kissing alone in the kitchen, and my dad grabs my mom's ass when he comes home from work, and when they're gone I'll have no safety net, I'll be alone, which I basically already am, which we all are, which is depressing, and it makes me sad, except not really, because they're supposed to die before me, and they don't feel sorry for themselves, in fact they're incredibly happy, and they know I love them, and it's all okay and maybe actually beautiful.
So I reconciled myself with their inevitable aging and loneliness and death. But knowing something intellectually and feeling it are completely different. I read "Meet Me in St. Louis" in Jonathan Franzen's How To Be Alone the other night and it triggered a random cathartic cry:
"My mother had long ago reconciled herself to staying in the house while her children fled to the coasts. We invited her to move to one of the coasts herself, but the house was her life, it was what she still had, it was not so much the site of her loneliness as the antidote to it...For the last week or so before she was hospitalized, my mother couldn't keep any food down, and by the time I arrived her refrigerator was empty of almost anything but ancient condiments and delicacies. On the top shelf there was just a quart of skim milk, a tiny can of green peas with a square of foil on top, and, next to this can, a dish containing a single bite of peas. I was ambushed and nearly destroyed by this dish of peas. I was forced to imagine my mother alone in the house and willing herself to eat a bite of something, anything, a bite of peas, and finding herself unable to do so. With her usual frugality and optimism, she'd put both the can and the dish in the refrigerator, in case her appetite returned."
Ooof. Ambushed and nearly destroyed indeed.
That's them on the Golden Gate Bridge last weekend. I'd been sick for a few weeks, and it was a nice weekend, and when they left it made me surpringly emotional. They love me in a completely unselfish way, nobody but one's parents do that, and I watched them sacrifice financially for us growing up, and it was always clear we were their whole life, my dad worked his ass off but never mentioned it, and my mom has endless patience and cheer, and they're getting so OLD!, and soon my mom will stop being beautiful and my dad will stop being strong, and they're going to die, and one will die before the other, and the remaining one will be lonely because they're still in love and I catch them kissing alone in the kitchen, and my dad grabs my mom's ass when he comes home from work, and when they're gone I'll have no safety net, I'll be alone, which I basically already am, which we all are, which is depressing, and it makes me sad, except not really, because they're supposed to die before me, and they don't feel sorry for themselves, in fact they're incredibly happy, and they know I love them, and it's all okay and maybe actually beautiful.
So I reconciled myself with their inevitable aging and loneliness and death. But knowing something intellectually and feeling it are completely different. I read "Meet Me in St. Louis" in Jonathan Franzen's How To Be Alone the other night and it triggered a random cathartic cry:
"My mother had long ago reconciled herself to staying in the house while her children fled to the coasts. We invited her to move to one of the coasts herself, but the house was her life, it was what she still had, it was not so much the site of her loneliness as the antidote to it...For the last week or so before she was hospitalized, my mother couldn't keep any food down, and by the time I arrived her refrigerator was empty of almost anything but ancient condiments and delicacies. On the top shelf there was just a quart of skim milk, a tiny can of green peas with a square of foil on top, and, next to this can, a dish containing a single bite of peas. I was ambushed and nearly destroyed by this dish of peas. I was forced to imagine my mother alone in the house and willing herself to eat a bite of something, anything, a bite of peas, and finding herself unable to do so. With her usual frugality and optimism, she'd put both the can and the dish in the refrigerator, in case her appetite returned."
Ooof. Ambushed and nearly destroyed indeed.
Lived in Bars
Not the newest video with the kids on the Facebooks, but it'll either be a lovely trip down memory lane or an introduction to your new favorite video. Everybody wins!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
It was a dead baby.
The baby entries in the dream dictionary were kinda interesting and amusing. So many kinds of baby dreams apparently: regular babies; forgeting you had a baby; about to have a baby; crying babies; starving babies; extremely small babies; dead babies; dipping a baby in and out of water.
Hold on. Back up. Dead babies?!? This reminds me of a story.
After high school, my friend Gina went to the same college as a weird guy from our school. Let's call him "Holster." I remember him having a loud monotone voice and putting Vaseline on his face and staring at my legs in math class and allegedly putting a safety pin through the skin of his penis during water polo practice or something. I think his parents both worked in the sciences. The kid was born to be awkward.
Anyway. Gina somehow heard that Holster had been dubbed the "weird guy" in his dorms. Apparently one night, a bunch of co-eds were sitting around laughing and spinning yarns when Holster appeared in the doorway. He looked pale and shaken. They stopped their jovial conversation and asked him what was up.
Holster: You guys, I was just walking down by the beach, and I went into a cave, and inside of the cave.....I saw..... a dead cat.
Co-Eds: Oh damn. That's harsh Holster. Sorry man....
Holster: (Silence)
Co-Eds: (Resume laughter and fun)
Holster: You guys. You guys! I mean....... it was a dead..... baby.
Hold on. Back up. Dead babies?!? This reminds me of a story.
After high school, my friend Gina went to the same college as a weird guy from our school. Let's call him "Holster." I remember him having a loud monotone voice and putting Vaseline on his face and staring at my legs in math class and allegedly putting a safety pin through the skin of his penis during water polo practice or something. I think his parents both worked in the sciences. The kid was born to be awkward.
Anyway. Gina somehow heard that Holster had been dubbed the "weird guy" in his dorms. Apparently one night, a bunch of co-eds were sitting around laughing and spinning yarns when Holster appeared in the doorway. He looked pale and shaken. They stopped their jovial conversation and asked him what was up.
Holster: You guys, I was just walking down by the beach, and I went into a cave, and inside of the cave.....I saw..... a dead cat.
Co-Eds: Oh damn. That's harsh Holster. Sorry man....
Holster: (Silence)
Co-Eds: (Resume laughter and fun)
Holster: You guys. You guys! I mean....... it was a dead..... baby.
Monday, February 18, 2008
My turtle baby.
Weird dream last night! A turtle was crawling on the ground, and it had extra adorable chubby arms and legs, and I realized it was a baby and I should be careful picking it up because the shell was soft and malleable and -- lightbulb moment! -- its fontanelle. Once I got it into my arms, it was nice that the baby was a turtle because the flat part fit against me and my hand had molded nicely into the shell to form a good grip.
Here is what a dream dictionary suggests:
Turtle - To see turtles in your dream, suggests that you will make slow but steady progress. You need to slow down and pace yourself. Alternatively, it indicates that you are sheltering yourself from the realities of life.
Baby - To see a baby in your dream, signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies may symbolize something in your own inner nature which is pure, vulnerable, and/or uncorrupted. Babies may represent an aspect of yourself that is vulnerable and helpless.
I've had the flu and felt the need to "take care of myself" and "slow down," so this clearly and totally fits! I'm also an Aquarious if readers have further brilliant insight.
Here is what a dream dictionary suggests:
Turtle - To see turtles in your dream, suggests that you will make slow but steady progress. You need to slow down and pace yourself. Alternatively, it indicates that you are sheltering yourself from the realities of life.
Baby - To see a baby in your dream, signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies may symbolize something in your own inner nature which is pure, vulnerable, and/or uncorrupted. Babies may represent an aspect of yourself that is vulnerable and helpless.
I've had the flu and felt the need to "take care of myself" and "slow down," so this clearly and totally fits! I'm also an Aquarious if readers have further brilliant insight.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Sharon Olds
I like her. Her poetry is always very visceral and body-oriented, but I like this one in particular for its focus on love as friendship and support system and raw unromanticized domesticity including but not limited to apparent mutual bathroom use, which for some reason sprung to mind after I saw Juno on Valentine's Day:
True Love
In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes muted exhausted, crushed, the whole
body of sex-surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
I also like this one:
Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the
the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
She also wrote this letter to Laura Bush declining an invitation to attend the National Book Festival.
True Love
In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes muted exhausted, crushed, the whole
body of sex-surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
I also like this one:
Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the
the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
She also wrote this letter to Laura Bush declining an invitation to attend the National Book Festival.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
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