you're a good boy, rodney

Grocery shopping in Malad

2009-05-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

(featuring my driver's ed teacher.)

Quickly...

2009-04-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

Why is my blog blue?

Mom was always trying to get grandma to move in with her girlfriends

2009-04-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

I love this piece in Slate today...

It aired at 9 p.m., between 227 and The Facts of Life, two other gynocentric comedies, the one celebrating the role of women in holding communities together, the other inculcating a fetish for prep-school girls. But The Golden Girls—about a group of older women sharing a Miami house designed like a multichamber sunroom—trafficked in something like pop feminism, and it's terrifically apt that Arthur played the Carrie Bradshaw figure in a sketch deftly spoofing on Sex and the City.

...Golden Girls boasted characters who were sharp in their humor and secure in their freedoms, which included the freedom to be mean. The show's most biting laugh lines—which are shaped so well that these scripts would work for radio—achieve that ideal bitchiness animating The Women.

I hated this show when it was actually on, but, in syndication, when I had mysterious free cable and could watch four episodes a day, I fell into a weird sort of post-cancellation fan trance--it's one of the things that got me through grad school. That explains why there were so many kitchen table scenes in my plays (except that I would replace the cheesecake with bourbon; now I'm back to cheesecake again). It was my first GG. You all know (I think) what #2 and #3 are.

"I had a baby."

2009-04-01T14:37:00.001-07:00

From Sara Levine's awesome new story. Yep. This is pretty much what it's like:

I had a baby.

“Why’d you have to have a baby?” Denny wanted to know. “There are so many babies on this block already. You know this neighborhood’s really changing. First the Starbucks and then we got a Gap.”

Good Jim

2009-04-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

McManus in Paper Cuts. He's working on a new poker book:

I’m in the copy-editing/fact-checking/caption-writing stage of “Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker,” a longish account of America’s, and lately the world’s, favorite card game. It will be published by FSG in October.

Gloria Steinem won't be going hunting any time soon

2009-03-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

“The idea of retiring is as foreign to me,” she says, “as the idea of going hunting.”

That's Gloria Steinem, sunglass-sporting cover girl of 70s feminism. She's 75, and for her birthday, the NY Daily News gave her a point-by-point status report on the movement she led (equal pay? still not there yet. sex education? abstinence ed still on the rise). Can I have a report card for my next birthday?

I was just saying to Paul today that I'm noticing more stories about feminism lately. Maybe it's just that I spend too much time reading Brainstorm and Jezebel. Here's a forward step for women. And another ("It's gonna take a lot more than a can of salsa to break me down!")

Publicola

2009-03-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've always been the book nerd, but now I'm actually the Booknerd.

Dedication

2009-03-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

I'm on a weird kick this morning of rummaging through dedications.

from The 13 Clocks:
To Jap and Helen Gude
who have broken more than one spell
cast upon the author by a witch or wizard,
this book is warmly dedicated.

from City of Ashes (book 2 in The Mortal Instruments, a YA vampire series):
For my father, who is not evil. Well, maybe a little bit.

from Rise Up
Mine.

from Franny and Zooey:
As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

How are you, Monsieur Lévy?

2009-03-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

This morning Silas and I were out at Magic Mouse and as we were walking home on 1st I saw a guy who I was convinced was Bernard-Henri Lévy. When I saw his face, I gasped. (This is why I try to avoid meeting my favorite writers whenever possible, good lord!) He looked uncomfortable (I mean, a bespectacled woman holding a toddler was staring at him), then he shook it off and walked south on 1st.

His internal monologue in my head:
Oh no, another fan. Oh wait, I am in Seattle. No one recognizes me here, heh heh (in French, of course... in his head, that is, not mine).

I decided to follow him. He looked a bit French. His hair was a little grayer than this photo. His clothes were casual but elegant and he had a stylish but understated book bag (very writerly). I thought, if he walks into Elliot Bay, that must be him. So we nonchalantly followed him, which became difficult when he stopped at the J&M to read the bankruptcy notice posted on the window. I pretended to be interested in the bankruptcy notice, leaning around him to read. At this point, Silas was yawning and nearly asleep on my shoulder. And Mr. Lévy/doppelganger kept reading the notice. As any good mother would, I decided to move on toward home. Once we passed E.B., I looked back and he was *still* reading the notice. So I decided we could "wait for the bus" for a few minutes. My arms were getting pretty tired, and Silas was actually nodding off on my shoulder. Finally, he walked over toward us but he did not go into Elliot Bay. (Aha, not BHL!) He did stop to look at the windows (BHL!) BUT not the window that's displaying his book, Left in Dark Times. (I think he was looking at the how-to-write book display. Suspiciously un-BHL!) He crossed Jackson and we followed him again. Then he scratched his ear with his little finger, which seemed a very French gesture to me but how would I know. Then he walked toward the water. I apologized to Silas and walked home.

And (what a day!!) I posted my first Slog comment. Someone already called me a moron! Okay, that's not exactly right. They said the thing I was talking about in the show was "moronic." (Actually, we have an interesting exchange after that, and my faith in humanity and the existence of thoughtful theatergoers in Seattle is restored.)

The hungry moose.

2009-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Idaho's latest tourism campaign? Actual wildlife, and you barely have to leave the resort! Poor moose. And elk and deer.

Poems for the first 100 days

2009-01-27T15:44:00.001-08:00

A daily poetry blog, curated by awesome, of-our-generation poets Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker. Every day is a new poem by a different poet, with something about the new world order, administration-wise.

This is an excerpt from a favorite of mine so far, by Matt Rohrer, day #2:

...
the president said we could
write poems again saying "president"
that people would have to
think about not just understand
like he said "science is
coming, people" to which my
son said "did he say
science?" I said "I know
it's hard to believe but
the new president said science"

"Nothing to fear but fear itself..."

2009-01-23T12:14:00.000-08:00

Hulu has a small collection of inaugural speeches up, including the first filmed inauguration (of William McKinley in 1901) and FDR's famous first mid-Depression speech.

I love the people milling around, and the socialite scanning the crowd to see who's there. Ah... pre-television. It's a bit like watching Duck Soup. Hail Freedonia. (FDR...sponsored by BlackBerry)

Kids e-cycling PSAs! Bloopers! Back-up dancers!

2009-01-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

Sixth-graders from the Swan School in Port Townsend... Lessons in video production: #1 holding the map of Washington is the ideal part (see: upstaging).

This time Adam has the mic...

Lopate on Sontag via her son

2008-12-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

I love this Phillip Lopate essay in the current Threepenny Review (yes, I'm reading it this morning when I should be working) about Susan Sontag's Under the Sign of Saturn and melancholia, including this anecdote from her son's memoir:

"...she was almost always dueling with depression. This was clearest immediately after she woke up, when, in an effort to shake off her despondency, she would talk, about anything and at breakneck speed, as if to overwhelm her mood with meteor showers of verbiage."

Take that, Brigham and your 55 wives!

2008-11-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

I'm still a little stunned that Prop 8 passed. My parents and I were walking in Pioneer Square last Friday and someone with a clipboard said, "Do you want to help me get back the right to marry that I lost on Tuesday." It took me about three blocks to figure out what the heck she was talking about... California.

I know the Mormons campaigned pretty heavily for it, but do they have to take all the blame? I mean, what about all the members who protested the church's support of Prop 8 and risked being excommunicated? And it's pretty convenient for evangelicals and other general bigots to let the "saints" take the heat. Oh well, it's easy to beat up on the Mormons.

of course, anyone who will read this also reads the Slog, but I couldn't resist these photos of the New York protests.

More on Mr. Pro-Life

2008-11-05T20:22:00.000-08:00

Ah, some clarification from the Spokesman-Review (thanks, Tom!):

"With a candidate for the U.S. Senate who’s legally changed his name to just “Pro-Life,” Idaho’s top election official is worried that voters might be confused – and vote for both “Pro-Life” and the candidate of their choice in the crowded race for retiring Sen. Larry Craig’s seat."

And then there's Pro-Life's renegade cousin, Less Taxes.

Did this happen in other states?

2008-11-05T13:19:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure Pro-Life is qualified to be a U.S. Senator (i.e., why I can't live in my home state).

Yes, I like Roseanne (yes, the show)

2008-10-22T22:27:00.001-07:00

EW has a photo retrospective on Roseanne, which started 20 (effing) years ago (!). I remember many people in my family *hating* this show (esp. grandpa, because Roseanne was big and loud, and my mom, who would pull a sort of ew face and shake her head every time it was on.) I'm still not sure why I like it so much--supporting cast, Darlene, their seemingly constant fights about brand-name vs. generic food. I'm sure it has something to do with the afghan.

Stop, please.

2008-09-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

Damn it.

We never talk about Katamari anymore

2008-08-24T14:01:00.001-07:00

...or knitting for that matter. Do I finally have a use for all that yarn in my back closet? (Yep... found it on BoingBoing. My blog is very personal.)

Urban homesteads, my ass

2008-07-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

This makes me want to barf. I mean, it's great to have a vegetable garden, and it's very cool that people are growing their own food, but do they have to be such self-congratulating twits (look at the comments!)? Ech. It's like when someone writes a personal essay for the college paper about how they met a very nice Real Change salesman and decided to give him $5 instead of $1.

Farmers have to get up every morning at 5 a.m. to do the chores, then go to their day jobs because the farm that they love generally does not pay the bills, then they go back to work on the farm after most urban people are already home from work, sitting on their patios ("my own piece of urban heaven"), drinking wine, and toasting themselves in congratulating gestures over the spicy basil. I know this organic basil, I have it on my patio, but I don't call myself a homesteader. Farmers are actually connected to the land (not the dirt in a planter), some since birth, and they are the people who will still be interested in "the land" after it's been relegated to the dustbin of good-causes past. Talk to me in 40 years and we'll see how your urban homestead (read: condo/townhouse; read: temporary) is doing. You will have moved on, and in the meantime many rural families will have to sell their homesteads because urban consumers, while we do our best to buy as much local food as we can, can't really support the farmers in our region under the current system. Congratulate yourself, then, you bandwagon-jumping jerk. I know you worked really hard to put in that tiered garden; I just ask that you have some perspective. And humility. There's a lot of change that needs to happen to fix our food system, and it sure ain't happening out of your vegetable garden.

I love Grist, normally. They have some really great, smart, informative posts. But this is just straight-up horseshit.

Pom poms, and nunchucks

2008-07-14T22:06:00.000-07:00

Holy shit. The New England Patriot franchise is training 600 Chinese cheerleaders for the upcoming Olympics. Apparently, they'll be cheering at every event. Enjoy the weirdness. (WSJ video via Shanghaiist).

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

The first act of Dr. Horrible (Joss Whedon's web series) just went up a little while ago. So far, so funny. Next episode: Thursday.

Tomorrow, Silas and I are off to the Yak for working and swimming (he's working, I'm swimming).

She first danced with Ballet Russes as Celia Siderova

2008-06-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

Instead of writing a too-long post about the amazing Cyd Charisse, I'll defer to Ain't it Cool News (yes, Ain't it Cool News). They have an extensive tribute ("Cyd Charisse has slipped back to Brigadoon...") with video footage from several of her movies.

If you don't know her work, put The Band Wagon in your queue (now, before everyone else does!). Or just watch Singin' in the Rain again (I know you've seen that one!). She's the leggy gal in the green and black.

A strange tribute to Sydney Pollack, from my junior high diary

2008-06-02T21:52:00.000-07:00

A bit late... I had to dig it out of the storage unit. It looks like an early rant about the great injustices of the Academy Awards. But, as it turns out, it's even weirder.

In this diary, whenever I missed days, I went back and filled in the blanks with some random joke, or valley-girl-ese (gag me with a spoon), or commercial jingle (wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?)--trying to create a time capsule of 80s hilarity, I'm guessing. So, I found out tonight that the Oscars didn't happen until April 11 that year--so, unless I was attuned to early Oscar buzz (did they have early Oscar buzz back then?), this is just a bizarro relic that I went back and added, probably a couple of months later. The mispelled Gandhi adds some bonus stupidity points.

On March 11, I actually did go "cruisin," which I apparently did every third day, according to this diary.

Happy Birthday Le Sacre...

2008-05-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

Diaghilev: Will the music continue like that for a very long time?

Stravinsky: To the end, my dear.

95 years ago today, Le Sacre du Printemps premiered at the Paris Opera. Ballet riots! Nijinksy! If I only had a time machine...

This morning, Silas and I have been listening to The Rite of Spring (both with Bernstein and Stravinsky conducting). I offer no analysis (because, frankly, I know nothing about music, really). Instead, I crib from others...

like, the Chicago Symphony (you may know as CSO):

...when the score was suggested to Walt Disney for his film Fantasia, he asked “The Sock?" clearly never having heard of Le sacre. ...

May 29, 1913, the night The Rite of Spring opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, is one of the dates historians cite as the start of the modern age, like 1907, the year Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, or 1922, when The Waste Land and Ulysses were published.

and NPR, where you can listen to a detailed analysis of the Rite or Stravinsky conducting the ballet in 1960.

and Alex Ross' great The Rest is Noise. This book is way more interesting than a book about classical music should be. From p. 92...

When Charlie Parker came to Paris in 1949, he marked the occasion by incorporating the first notes of the Rite into his solo on "Alt Peanuts." Two years later, playing Birdland in New York, the bebop master spotted Stravinsky at one of the tables and immediately incorporated a motif from Firebird into "Koko," causing the composer to spill his scotch in ecstasy.

YouTube has some great clips, both of the ballet (a Joffrey production from, not sure, the 60s?) and of Stravinsky,

like this super geeky documentary: .
(think pictures of instruments with text "ribbons", and Star Warsian titles)

And this short interview on a ship. Someone commented that Stravinsky looks drunk, but it seems more likely that he was bewildered by questions like, "Who created music?" (Huh? Where's my interpreter?) Bonus: this 1965 documentary seems to be narrated by Orson Welles, or maybe all 1960s narrators sounded like Orson Welles.

If we only lived in London, I could have seen three different dance companies' interpretations in the last year (from Robin Grebson's blog... I have no idea who Robin Grebson is, but this person likes dance and music, so I like this person):

"The Rite of Spring was, quite simply, awesome. For somebody who doesn’t really do “classical” this managed to be the 3rd version of The Rite that I have seen in a year, and although the Michael Clark and LPO/Julia Mach versions were both great in their own ways, this was something else altogether."

This was written about a performance of Frühlingsopfer by Tanztheater Wuppertal. According to their spielplan I can see their company if hurry to Paris by mid-June.

I don't love the 90s: brewpubs killed my nostalgia buzz

2008-05-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

I went to Pull-Mo last week, that's the Palouse, land-grant country, the country... to cover the state FFA convention, so I got to spend one night in my old college town. Anyone familiar with Moscow will be sad to know that Gambinos (home of the fish bowl) is no more. Instead, it's the Coeur d'Alene Brewing Company with a tricked out deck and expanded seating.

On a brighter note, we found out from our friend Amo last week that some UI architecture profs have been trying to save this old granary... much more of a Moscow fixture. When I asked the guy at the BBQ bus in the motel parking lot, he said they didn't know what was happening to it. Condos? Office building? At least it won't be a brewpub.

I stayed at the Royal Motor Inn, the only motel downtown and one that, incidentally, my parents managed in college. (The Fifth Dimension stayed there once; I think they had the same room decor that I had.)

I knew from reading online reviews that the sheets at RMI were tie-dyed, but it is impossible to imagine the impact of seeing mauve and green liquid-stained sheets until you pull back the covers.

The next morning, when I walked out the front door of my room and saw the store across the alley, all became clear...

There's not much else to report from my trip. On Friday night, I walked by the SUB, my old apartment, and the ATO house, the non-official entrance to G.R., where I got a little sad and creeped out (it was dusk). I was lame and working and did not stop in John's Alley for a Black Label or the Garden Lounge for a g&t. I was deep in FFA/reporter mode, plus it seemed a little weird and creepy to "go out" in bars where I used to pick people up (or try to pick people up) so many years ago.

Saturday morning, I enjoyed one of several downtown healthy bakeries and the farmers setting up for the outdoor market but missed out on the handicrafts store that now occupies half of what used to be Ken's Stationery, where I worked in college. (I was in charge of the crepe paper and Post-it notes.)

So, Moscow's changed, and it hasn't. I've definitely changed--maybe it's because of Silas, I don't know. I do know that nostalgia sucks. It always did, I just never noticed before.

"And here we have Idaho..."

2008-04-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Ha. Ha ha ha. That's something Idaho has a lot of.... bored teenagers.

Snow hid the oversized phallus over the winter, but when it emerged again in the spring some neighbors had had enough.

"They're upset about it," said Annette Tetreault, a worker at Moxie Java near the hill on Bogus Basin Road, which gives motorists a full windshield view of the hillside. "Maybe it could be offensive."

Others were indifferent.

Why don't we just go ahead and ruin bacon everywhere?

2008-04-09T20:23:00.001-07:00

Stupid CAFOizing Americans.

For anyone who doesn't know... I wrote a story about some pigs imported from Austria that were an old-style Eastern European breed, and we are lucky to be able to get them here because they have not been "improved" by American methods of pig production. The story is coming soon, and I noticed that the P-I wrote about them today, too. (No, I won't link to you, P-I. I was there first.)

Oh, Betty

2008-04-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

Ok. This is from yesterday. But I can't resist practically useless, yet somehow so appealing, regular segments like "first ladies who rock."

I especially love the fun facts on this one:

--Mrs. Ford supported the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights.
--Her maiden name was Bloomer.
--She performed with Martha Graham's dance company in Carnegie Hall.
--She told McCall's magazine that the only thing she'd never been asked was how often she had sex with her husband. "And if they'd asked me that I would have told them, 'As often as possible.'"
--Without her, there would be no Betty Ford Center, and half the punchlines on late night television would not make sense.

Speaking of Betty Ford Center, we were just at my parents' condo in Palm Desert, which is just a couple of gigantic, artificially oasisized blocks away from the BFC main campus on Bob Hope Drive. That, and having dinner on the same veranda as Brigitte Nielsen in Palm Springs, were our two celebrity moments. Don't you want to move to California?

Well, at least someone agrees

2008-03-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

I've been boring people for years with my analysis of Less Than Zero as The Great Gatsby of our generation (or The Sun Also Rises, I kind of go back and forth), so I was happy to read this.

The day I met my dream book

2008-03-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

Ferdinand: It's one of those days when everyone you talk to seems to be an imbecile. Then you start to wonder about yourself. --from Pierrot le fou

Yes, exactly. I was having a great day at the library. Then I went shopping. I will spare you the story of my bad retail experience because: a) bad retail/customer service stories are super boring; b) two very patient people in my life already had to sit through every dang detail; and, c) people telling these stories always come out sounding more like assholes the more they try to describe the assholeness of the other party. And, come on, we all know who the real assholes are. This is just shopping.

Then, you know the bad dream that has you accidentally on an express bus to Puyallup? Fortunately, my accidental express bus only took me to West Seattle. (Did you know you can get to West Seattle from downtown in 5 minutes? They don't just say that. It's actually true.)

This was all forgotten as soon as I saw Silas, and as soon as I remembered this happy library find in my Strand bag. I love Martha Gellhorn anyway, but I think this is my favorite title ever. Ever.

And Buffy, too

2008-03-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks I have been getting back in touch with my old friend, television. Not in an I've-accepted-that-Dancing with the Stars-is-on-every-day sort of way (although my Mom did force me to watch it last week), but in a tv-party-on-my-Macbook 24/7 way. This party consists of:

1) Hulu. Holy shit. They have 30Rock, Fame, St. Elsewhere, and now... season two of Buffy. (The hair! Did people really look like that 11 years ago?) If they add Now and Again and Family I'm doomed, for certain.

2) TV professors! I think this is my dream job. See "Notes on Single Camera Comedy," found during my recent obsession with the now infamous failure of AS-P's Jezebel James, which people are blaming mostly on the laugh track and unexpected actor incompatibility. I watched all three episodes and the writing wasn't bad, but it's probably in the actors' best interest that no one see them act like that ever again (Parker Posey, cutesy or uptight? Even she's not sure. And Lauren Ambrose: forever petulant teen?). If you feel at all traumatized by these performances, just go rent Dazed and Confused, Personal Velocity, and SFU: Season 5, and you'll forget all about it. (No, sadly, none of these are on hulu yet.)

Yesterday, I felt traumatized by the failure (exacerbated by the fact that I wrote about it last week w/o warning people about the bad reviews). Failure is just really f-ing sad, even if it helps you move on to better things. If you don't believe me, come over to my house and watch Silas reach a little too far around the dishwasher until he crashes down, bonking his little head on the hard tiles. Which leads me to...

3) The great theater of life. Besides daily episodes of Rock of Love II on my actual television (Who will Ambre tattle on next? Did Bret really just say, "She hasn't addressed to me yet..."?), there are the daily articles in Variety and other industry pubs talking about the dismally slow pilot season and decline of television, as well as the writers' complaints that producers are out to punish them.

A TV studio chief is less generous in responding to the notion that companies are out for payback, calling those who make such accusations "crybabies."

"I’m not trying to get back at anyone," the exec said. "This is just the ebb and flow of any market and being true to what people’s value really is."

Six-word memoirs

2008-03-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

Writing is getting me nowhere today.

No, I am not married yet.

I just kept changing my hair.

On hard days, we ate cookies.

And for Si...
Crawling, crawling and still not there.

And another... more reading!

2008-02-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

I found this reading challenge--What's in a Name--via the nyrb books blog. Just what I need, another diversion. And yet, another diversion! And it helps me with my goal of actually reading the books I have in my house.

Here are my books (with the # of years owned + not read):
1. Color - Purple America, Rick Moody (11 years)
2. Animal - Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Lorrie Moore (4 years)
3. First name - The Dick Gibson Show, Stanley Elkin (3 years)
4. Place - Europe Central, William Vollman (2 years)
5. Weather Event - Snow, Orhan Pamuk (3 years)
6. Plant - In the Beauty of the Lillies, John Updike (13 years)

Yet another diversion...SET is online

2008-02-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite games is now a puzzle online. As if I don't already waste enough time with puzzles and online miscellany. When I first discovered it this morning, I thought it was faulty because the cards didn't change out. But (read the rules, duh) they switch out every day and you can re-use cards to find 4 (beginner) or 6 (advanced) sets--keep looking.

On the verge of...

2008-02-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

I'm cleaning out my files as part of the big transfer to the new macbook(!) and I found this folder under "essays" and "mine." Wow. It's difficult to imagine the kind of fabulousness I have forgone by not saving anything in the folder of greatness since February 4, 2005.

P.S. Regarding my last post: Ignore me. I know nothing. Your vote counts! Go to the caucus! Go!

Happy Super (you live in WA and yer vote don't count) Tuesday!

2008-02-05T14:17:00.000-08:00

TNR's latest issue has a feature of "eggheads and eminences" talking about who they are voting for. Poet C.K. Williams is voting for Obama, and adds:

I have to say that, as a spectator, I'm much more fascinated by the Republicans. Watching those shifty, devious, unscrupulous creatures clawing at each other in spasms of demagoguery and pander is like beholding the whole vile, fear-driven history of humanity.

And, if you're a Hillary hold-over like me, you might enjoy Erica Jong's not-surprisingly feminist statement, even if the last sentence is a little old school, in an over-the-top, yep, my-mom-would-say-that sort of way. I wish it were more hopeful, but then I could say the same for the H.C. campaign.

Whatever gets you through the blog

2007-12-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

Let's see. What's the laziest way for me to post?

Link to something I already wrote.

About Silas.

About Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights.

And add this ambiguous picture of something I am currently writing about. Everyone wants to get to the water first, or, well, eventually.

When all my five and country senses see...and type

2007-12-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

I see that it has been almost a month since I last posted, but I have an excuse (well, many excuses, like "I am a liar who does not keep promises.")

Nanowrimo wrapped last Friday night and I finished (i.e., submitted 50,046 words) at 11:09 pm. My goal initially was to write 1,500 or so words per day. This would solidify my daily writing practice. Ha.

By November 25, I had only typed 13,000 words. It became Heidi's Nanowriwe--a frantic race of typing and no sleep. The goal changed to typing as fast as possible to see what would come out. Surrealist automatic writing experiment, or insane compulsion?

The really important thing is that I am a winner (along with 15,333 others). And I now have 80 pages of Wordspew, 5 or 6 new characters (depending on whether one is dead), a ranch and a bar (do I ever come up with new settings?) and a bunch of writing about Seattle that I might be able to use.

Silas is waking up so I have to wrap this up. But I wanted to at least keep the promise to myself (amidst my meandering, obsessive reading of Elizabeth Hardwick today) of posting.

Norman Mailer and the Gilmores

2007-11-12T11:37:00.000-08:00

I feel sad and disjointed today knowing that there won't be any more new work from Norman Mailer. I love his writing the way I love Hemingway, the way I love Didion. He was able to bring out the truth and beauty in a simple story without gussying it up. And he was truly connected to his time--his best work forms a chronicle of the last half of the 20th Century in America.

I particularly have a soft spot for Norman Mailer because he appeared on Gilmore Girls and spoke of the show so kindly in this interview:
...for some reason I find Gilmore Girls kind of agreeable. The character Lorelai reminds me very much of my second-oldest daughter, Danielle—both of them are like beautiful hummingbirds, constantly talking and adjusting what they say, quick to the breeze.
He also wrote this book--one of my top 5, for sure--which I carried around Chicago with me for three months in the winter of 2002. I love it because it is Utah and my childhood. And, truly, anyone who can make Gary Gilmore beautiful is an amazing writer.

I've been scanning it for 20 minutes trying to find a representative quote, but it doesn't lend itself to easy excerpting because it is built with a mound of facts and quotes. Luckily, the L.A. Times has already done it, and I'll just crib from them (they get paid for this, after all):
Nielsen had his secretary bring a cup of coffee. Then he said, "Lieutenant Skinner is going to sign a complaint charging you with the homicide of Max Jensen." After a short pause, Gary said, "Hey, I really feel bad about those two guys. I read one of their obituaries in the paper last night. He was a young man and had a kid and he was a missionary. Makes me really feel bad."

"Gary, I feel bad too. I can't understand taking a life for the amount of money you got."

Gary replied, "I don't know how much I got. What was there?"

Nielsen said, "It was $125, and in Provo, approximately the same amount." Gary began to cry. He didn't weep with any noise but there were tears in his eyes. He said, "I hope they execute me for it. I ought to die for what I did."

Which one of us was knocked up?

2007-10-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

Since Paul and I recently watched Knocked Up (come on, you don't need a link to that), I've been trying to think of any big comedy (or small comedy, for that matter) with the event of childbirth written from the woman's perspective.

Think about the movies with childbirth scenes that you can remember: There's that lame movie from the 80s about the commitmentphobe who struggles with the idea that his wife is pregnant. And that lame movie from the 90s about the commitmentphobe who struggles with the idea that his girlfriend is pregnant.

The first childbirth scene I remember seeing in a movie was from Paternity, that movie with Burt Reynolds. I thought this was the lame 70s movie about the commitmentphobe, etc., but remember now that he was a bachelor looking for a woman to have his baby (and it was 1981, which is sort of like the 70s).

In every case, the former lout undergoes a magical transformation upon the event of childbirth in which he falls hopelessly in love with the baby/babymama/idea of fatherhood right around the time that the woman is being wheeled into delivery (note: women are not wheeled into delivery any more, in case you don't know this already).

Tina Fey to the rescue, possibly. While it is more a movie about an adoption than a childbirth, I have high hopes that Baby Mama (set to release in April 2008), breaks this trend, Fey being a writer and a mother and funny, generally. While it does have the cliche of a single career gal who desperately wants a baby, and the cliche of the working-class gal who finds herself pregnant, it does bring them together to muddle through the pregnancy together, which sounds new. AICN had a quick review of a screening in NYC (which says almost as much about the venue as about the film). Sounds potentially promising.

And, then, of course, mommied as I am, I'm several months late in finding out about Juno (releasing this December, trailer here). It's directed by the Thank You for Smoking guy and was written by Diablo Cody, a girl, so maybe it more than pretends to be from the teenage girl's perspective. And it co-stars Michael Cera, who like collective-crush objects Seth Rogan and, formerly, Burt Reynolds, will likely make it worthwhile.

Silas indulges Mama on her birthday

2007-08-31T00:25:00.000-07:00

Who was your college roommate?

2007-08-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

So, L. Craig was my dad's fraternity brother and roommate. Paul has advised me not to post any more about this, so you'll have to get the (very brief) story in person.

I listened to the interrogation tape at the Spokesman Review site and tried to imagine this defender of marriage and NRA board member at the old D Chi house chugging a Thunderbird. (The tape is actually more fascinating than you would expect, not that it's unfamiliar to listen to a Republican sidestepping a series of difficult questions).

But L.C. was Student Body President of U of I, described by his friends as "studious" and "awkward with women" in the Idaho Statesman's ridiculously detailed account of his history, in which he consistently replies to reporters: "jiminy!" and "I don't pick up men."

Jiminy. Go Vandals.

omg (lower case, shame)... my blog sucks

2007-08-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

First of all, I have to apologize for the AndyRooneyishness of my last post (I've noticed all the cranes lately and I've been wondering, Who is this Paul Allen fellow anyway?) I sound like one of those people who hangs out in Irish bars in Wallingford in my black leather jacket crying into my red hook about that lifechanging Nirvana concert in 1992. STFU!

I really hesitated about starting a blog because I was afraid that it would be too difficult to execute and sustain (says the grant writer!) without having a distinct reason for being. Being right about that does not make me feel better about the fact that it sucks. But does it really suffer from lack of concept?

Funnily (a funny word I've stolen from Paul), I was sure that my ideas about needing a solid conceptual base came from one of my best professors--best because he's one of those people who's in my head all the time (he would hate this blog, and he should, it sucks)--so I googled in search of a quote, and this is what I found (from an interview I did, which makes me a pretty big dork for linking to it, but this post needs a g.d. link):

I'd like to see students get more comfortable with the idea that art needn't serve some a priori identifiable function. Too many students feel a need to justify their work in advance of making it. ... They'd be better off trusting that real innovations create their own, unforeseen function. The idea that you can pre-ordain your work's function often means you want it to function in a therapeutic way: "doing good," correcting some abstract social inequity, etc. Not all art should be about expressing earnest hope for the improvement of the species, though. Ask Baudelaire. Ask Wilde. Anyway, in general I'd say students should concentrate on making real behavioral innovations. Let the audience decide their importance.

David Robbins saves my lazy ass again.

Now that I'm headfirst into this thing without a purpose (and sleeping through most of it... you should read the daily blog in my 4:15am head... fabo!), I will try to concentrate on the very simple behavior of posting every day. Some of it will suck (just warning you all). Otherwise I have to delete the whole g.d. thing and as those of you who know me know, I don't like to throw anything away.

All the kids go to Sharon's (at some point)

2007-06-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, we met friends at the Georgetown Artopia and carnival, where we enjoyed the power tool races (shown here) and other exciting oddities and bands with hairy teenagers.

How do they do it? Somehow Georgetown seems to remain in a perpetual state of just-before-coolness. You know, Bumbershoot in the early 90s cool, when you could see bands all day long for six bucks and you didn't have to wait two hours in every line. So many things go the way of Bumbershoot (and the Gorge, where we are going next week to see Willie!)--overly commercial, overly crowded, overly coifed--to the point that it almost makes you not want to leave the house for another g.d. festival. Georgetown is different. I won't rave about it too much and spoil your fun, but they do have another festival coming up next weekend (a garden walk, sadly, not a carnival).

Among the many attractions we enjoyed was something that wasn't even part of the festival: a WWII-era airplane that flew over throughout the day. As we were walking back to our car after the day's festivities--dinner at Stellar, performance art on the sidewalk, and a quick stop at Belle and Whistle--we saw a thirty-something woman on the corner looking up. When we asked her about the airlanes, she got very excited. "You can pay to go in them," she told us. When we asked how much it cost: "I don't know, but I bet it's a bundle. Some rich person must be doing that."

Some rich person is doing that. I was driving this morning and heard one of those NPR adlets for Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection. Last weekend, and this weekend too, they are featuring the P51-D "Mustang."

Weirdly, this reminds me of Sharon, the town babysitter in Malad. We didn't have anything like licensed daycare there, because most moms didn't work. Those moms that did work took their kids to Sharon's. Sharon's was awesome: she had a basement full of toys and a mini-playground in the backyard, and when you went to Sharon's she would just turn you loose with about 40-50 other kids from age 3 to 12. The only rule was that you had to share. I don't even think we had to clean up after ourselves.

And that's Paul Allen, Seattle's town babysitter. He's building us a giant playground (have you driven down Denny lately?), he lets us into his geek basement, and we can play with his toys. It costs a bundle, but if you're willing to give up a few bucks and your lingering sense of nostalgia for the days when Seattle actually had diners, quirky festivals that aren't overrun by tourists, and one-story buildings, you get to hang out at Sharon's, Seattle-style. Or you can move to Portland (doesn't he own the Trailblazers, too?). You could also move to Yakima, or Malad. I'm pretty sure he doesn't own anything there.

"You've been in labor for nine weeks..."

2007-06-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

My friend Jen reminded me recently that I was still on prelabor day 14. (Hi, Jen... thanks for continuing your efforts to read my poor, dormant rodney.)

Baboos is now with Paul. I've asked for my own D&D night (i.e., a night away as a trade for his regular Wednesday game). I was about to start my excursion to the front room (this is where I write, in theory... it's really where I pet the cats and wander around in a book-induced haze trying to figure out what I could be reading). I was about to settle in when he started crying (Silas, not Paul). I went to the kitchen to see what was wrong. Paul had him. I went back to the front room. I couldn't work. I couldn't putter around in the front room. My right boob hurt. I went back to the kitchen. I tried to take him away from Paul. Paul told me to get out of the house.

I'm at Top Pot. Silas is sleeping. Or he's crying. Paul has him. I have nine minutes left of my D&D night.

Apparently, if I start laughing right now, Silas will receive a significant health benefit (or at least be less likely to be itchy...thanks, Jill, for the tip!). If I were a good mom, I would laugh right now. Laugh, damn it. I have three minutes left.

Here's my baboos:

Paul just called. The baby is stirring.

Pre-prelabor day fourteen

2007-04-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

The other night I was laying in bed, firmly cocooned in my pillow fort (that's three on the headboard, one under my hip, one behind my back, one between my legs, and a giant body pillow between Paul and I). Waves of pain were emanating from what I'm guessing is my cervix. In between chanting my new relaxation mantra--ow, ow, ouch, ow--I said to Paul, I've gone through my whole life without ever really feeling pain. This made him laugh, which validated my sense of comic timing (you have to cling to your meager, intermittent successes when you look like a giant pear and feel like there's a metal rod shoved through your back).

It's also true. When I was five I broke my arm. That must have hurt but I remember the cool cast more than the pain. I had cramps when I was a teenager, but good-old BCP took care of that for many years. So I'm studying all these unusual pains--the aches, the stabs, the discomforts. This is what I wanted: to go through labor without medication so I could feel the full experience. What a dork. And we haven't even started yet.

I often think about that scene in Lawrence of Arabia in which O'Toole holds his hand over the match to show off his super-human pain tolerance (which must have seemed shocking in the pre-Fear Factor, pre-Eastern-philosophy-saturated 1960s American culture), then invites another guy to try it.

William Potter: Ooh! It damn well 'urts!
T.E. Lawrence: Certainly it hurts.
Officer: What's the trick then?
T.E. Lawrence: The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

I've been trying to find this in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom but it appears this sum-up is the invention of a screenwriter who wanted to encapsulate Lawrence's various thoughts on pain into one pithy line.

Paul has been excellent at keeping my spirits up. Last Friday, we took a trip to Costco, usually a source of distress, which surprisingly yielded two happy pills: 1) I got to drive a handi-cart (sitting on your ass the whole time substantially improves the Costco experience, trust me); 2) We bought Guitar Hero II which allows me to realize my dreams of being a rock star momma, with the guitar controller resting comfortably on my poochy belly as I clunk through the color-coded notes. My band, Procreat, is now on tour and rockin' Providence. (The downside? You do get songs like "Cherry Pie" and "Carry on Our Wayward Son" stuck in your head for days.)

No news on the baby front. I've had various signs of labor, all of which mean that he could be born today or in two days or in two weeks. So I'm also studying patience and finding that, while I ask a lot of questions (the triage nurse knows me by first name now), I am a willing and curious student. Is there any other time in my life that I will get to sit on the couch for hours starting at my books, staring at the baby toys, staring at my toes? When I say hours, I'm not exaggerating. The trick is not minding that you're wasting time.

Pre-prelabor day four

2007-04-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

The small soldier came up to Gros-Louis waving a newspaper.

"It's peace!"

Gros-Louis set down his bucket. "What did you say, my boy?"

"I said it's peace."

Gros-Louis looked at him dubiously.

"Peace? But there hasn't been war."

After three days of painful, then nonpainful, then intermittent contractions (which, oddly, I keep calling "transactions"), I have no contractions, productive or otherwise.

I feel like the characters from The Reprieve, Sartre's novel about Parisians frantically gearing up for war in 1938 only to wake up one morning and find out that Daladier had signed the Munich agreement (the "peace" in which he agreed to cede part of France to the Sudeten Germans).

Of course, instead of enlisting, confessing secrets, or drinking ourselves blind we were timing contractions, writing a birth plan, and setting up the co-sleeper. But, we're ready now, by god.

A country road. A tree. Evening.

2007-04-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

Mr. Godot told me to tell you that he won't come this evening but surely to-morrow.

Today I stopped taking the nifedipine (that blood pressure medicine that's been keeping my smooth muscles quiet ... i.e., stopping those daily contractions I've been having from really going anywhere.)

I'm not sure if I'm Didi and Paul's Gogo, or the other way around. I'm here and he's out, so I'm my own sidekick tonight. No contractions now. Just waiting.

Oh, Inverted Belly

2007-04-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

Some mornings I wake up and say, he grew last night. Mostly it's a guess, I feel slightly stretched on one side or the other. This morning, though, I stumbled into the shower and ran the soap over my belly and my belly button, which has been slowly disappearing over the past few weeks, is gone. Or, I should say, inverted. I didn't realize how much I liked my belly button, or playing with my belly button, until it was gone. This is all temporary, of course. In the shower, I started reciting that bit from Bill Cosby's "Kindergarten" about the navel game:

"I was playing with my navel ([deep voice] oh, navel, navel). My mother said, 'Alright, keep playing with your navel, pretty soon you're gonna break it wide open the air's gonna come right out of your body and you'll fly around the room backwards for 30 seconds, land and you'll be flat as a piece of paper with just your little eyes buggin out.' I used to carry band-aids around with me in case I had an accident."

I've hit my limit of technical expertise (or Blogger's, depending on how you look at it) and can't offer you a quick link to it. But you can get a download here for only 32 cents.

If I find a site where I can upload the mp3, I'll post it. Or you can come to our house and we'll play it for you. Idiot mittens. Luke warm, curdly milk. Good stuff.

Video-ette Party

2007-03-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

New video by my friend Ilana in NY (who decided we were soul mates after she saw my copy of The Trials of Lenny Bruce and well-worn Fame VHS tape).

Vera! (or why you should come to Seattle Center today)

2007-02-20T09:13:00.000-08:00

If Staley could have foreseen his final resting place, he might have thought twice about his little habit.

But look at his view...

Today kicks off the big opening party of the brand-spankin-new music and gallery space for The Vera Project, the nonprofit darling of twenty- and thirty-something, music-worshipping Seattlites. You remember Drink for the Kids, right? That's Vera.

One nice thing about working at the Center is that you can wander by the Vera space every few days or so and see the progress. These pictures are actually from late January (taken by my talented friend Linda).

Last week, Vera looked more like this.

It's hard to walk by the pristine space and not feel ambivalent about the future of Seattle music. Imagine AiC or Soundgarden or even DCFC emerging from this "state-of-the-art facility." But who can crush the dream: music for the kids. MUSIC FOR THE KIDS! CREATIVE EXPRESSION! SAFE, EASILY ACCESSIBLE PARKING. This is all part of the big new plan to make Seattle Center hip (charette, anyone?). I'm making fun but I'm there every day, watching the progress. Dorks like me who moved to Seattle for the music have to be there, secretly watching the progress. Secretly loathing it. Loving it. How can you not love the art kids?

The Ver(a)rt Gallery Opening, "Don't Let the GermBots Bite" by OneSevenNine (with music and snacks, of course), starts at 6 pm. If you want to publicly confess your extreme music dorkitude, stop by at 3 pm when Mayor Nickels cuts the ribbon on Seattle's first city-sanctioned all ages club. And tell yourself it's just a cleaner version of the Off Ramp.

If you listen closely, you may even hear Staley's transcendent, mono-moan screech,

Down in a hole

Feeling so small

Conversation overheard at local spa (it was a Christmas present, ok)

2007-01-28T21:44:00.000-08:00

The Relaxation Facilitator prepares the client-in-white-robe’s feet for the soaking bowl.

RF: I’m Audra. Let me know if you need anything else.

CIWR: Audra. That’s a pretty name.

RF: I renamed myself, actually. My original name was Cassandra.

CIWR: That’s nice, too.

RF: Well, I’m a singer so I wanted something different. And Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress.

CIWR: So it’s a stage name?

RF: No, I actually legally changed my name.

CIWR: That’s so funny. I legally changed my name, just a couple of weeks ago.

RF: What to?

CIWR: My whole life I’ve been Jill. But I’ve been getting into writing lately, so I thought Isabel.

RF: That’s so perfect.

CIWR: Yeah, thanks. I’m totally excited about it.

I sing the body inflated

2007-01-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

I have two chicken pox scars on my belly. I've had them since I was five, about two inches to the left of my belly button (my left). They're an inch and a half apart. Well, they were. Now they're four and a half inches apart.

We don't have any naked mirrors in our house, so I hadn't really looked at it. But we were in Vail this weekend and everyone was out skiing, so I got to hang out in the condo by myself and walk around naked. And I finally got a good look. The belly. The distension. Distensibility. It's amazing: the network of blue veins from my neck to my hips, the nearly translucent skin, the taut oval more bulgy at the bottom than at the top, sort of like a Weeble.

On Monday we went for a swim. They had a pool there the size of a giant bathtub. I mean, they had a bathtub the size of a pool. They had a pool. It was very warm. So I wore the only swimsuit I have, a bikini (courtesy of Amy, my neighbor and personal maternity clothier). Even Paul had to agree that the belly was pretty exciting. I said, my belly never looked this good in a bikini, and he said, I don't think I've seen your belly in a bikini. He has a habit of forgetting the things I need him to. He is the perfect mate.

Baby H is moving around a lot these days. We have little games. I discovered this one in the tub: If he kicks, I poke my belly, and he kicks again. He seems to follow my pokes. (He just kicked now.) Some days it works, and some days it doesn't. Mostly, I think he's playing me, the hopeful mother already trying too hard to connect with her son.

I did figure out a way to get him to move. For some reason, he enjoys hanging out low in the torso, which I'll tell you now is pretty uncomfortable. Imagine a pair of 3cm-long feet kicking around in your bladder and cervix area. Ech. But I was lying in bed the other night and figured out that if I put my hand (it has to be warm) closer to my ribs, he will move up under my hand. When he does that I like to sing to him, unless Paul's trying to sleep next to me. We have a couple of songs so far. I try to sing the same ones, so he'll recognize them when he comes out, and enjoy them until he's a preteen and figures out they're stupid songs.

I've definitely hit the phase people kept talking about. The one in which you finally have energy and can stomach at least a few cooking smells and feel ok about everyone wanting to take care of you and weep whenever you fold the tiny tees that people have already started to give him. On Saturday, naked day, I thought that I might want to stay pregnant forever. Well, talk to me in about a month.

To begin with, I’m pretty darn fat…

2007-01-09T20:50:00.000-08:00

and whenever I say that, people say to me, “you’re not fat” or “it’s not really fat.” A reflex, no doubt. Of course, when I say “I’m so fat,” I mean, isn’t it hilarious that I have this baby crawling around inside my body, and there’s this big belly, and isn’t it great and weird? My nephew gets it. He’s three. We were out to dinner and I proclaimed my intention to order the peppermint ice cream. “You can’t have ice cream. You’re too fat.” And this makes a cute three-year-old story but I guess it also makes him sound a bit size-ist. He’s thin and tall and he knows a lot about sharks. And he’s excited about his pending boy cousin.

We’re at week 24: the baby is about 12 to 13 inches tall and weighs 1.5 lbs. He has all his muscles but no fat on his body yet.

It’s hard to know what to say about being pregnant that hasn’t been said. Or is it? On the one hand, the CDC reported 4,163,000 live births between May 2005 and April 2006 in the U.S. So, that’s about four times the size of Seattle and about 2,175 times the number of people in my hometown, where women regularly have four to eight kids. But this is one kid, and the nine-month combo of the two of us is unique. More unique than anything I could write. Unlike a story idea that revealed itself magically at 3:25 am (voila! out of the collective unconscious), and that I might have worked on for months then abandoned, I won’t see it on HBO or in The Believer in two years and think, well, I could have done that. I did do that. Nearly. And (best part) there are no critiques: “She doesn’t have quite the irritability that we expect in these sort of collaborations, but we’ve definitely seen that waddle before.” I guess there'll be plenty of criticism after he comes, but for now I'm on my own.

So far, everything has been completely normal: the sickness (months 2 to 4), the exhaustion (better now, but still a factor), and the belly rubbing (I never saw myself as a belly rubber, but it feels pretty good — highly recommended). It’s nice to be able to eat doughnuts and sit on the couch watching movies for four or more hours a day.

It is strange to be walking around with a big poochy belly — conspicuous and then quickly invisible. People notice, obviously (except the people on my crowded morning bus, who pretend to look away as I’m trying to steady myself in the aisle while they relish their seatdom). In my neighborhood, the quick response is a vague non-response, a sorting out that may go something like this: Girl. Lady. Pregnant lady. Um, what’s in The Stranger this week? I can remember sorting in this way, hungover, on a Friday morning. One of us, not one of us.

The Center House is full of birds this morning and I can’t decide if that’s cute or really gross. It’s hard to imagine the SC food court being any grosser but there it is. Guano. GUANO. (No, I didn’t see guano. It’s the thought.)

And I sort them out, too. Converse, cords, hoodie. Yup. That was me. Now it’s not. My hoodies are too tight. Then something else happens, especially with boys: Boy. Really young boy. Son. Son? Hmmm. Where did that come from?

A woman just came and sat down at a table near me. She’s meeting a man here. He pulls out some photocopies, which seem to be galleys. “I don’t want a bunch of title shit on there,” she says. “I’ll take it off,” he says. “Dang it.”

I was walking to yoga Saturday and this harlequinesque goth kid, 19ish, passed me near SCCC. He did the quick look. Then he kept staring as we passed each other. This I’m not used to. I spent the rest of the three blocks trying to figure out what it all meant: he hates breeders, he loves bellies, he hates mommies, he hates his own mommy, he wants to kiss me, he wants to stab me, he's hungover and hates the idea of a vaguely rotund, chipper mama bouncing off to morning yoga class, readying for her unapologetic contribution to the too fat belly of the earth.

The Bus is Back

2006-10-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Poetry Bus is back! Actually, despite Paul's and my fantasy about the bus pulling up to the Space Needle fresh from the road and full of unshowered and bewildered poets, they actually came back yesterday. The final pobus reading is tonight, though, at 8pm on the Skyline level of the Space Needle. The lineup is astounding, plus, you get to go up the Needle for only $5. I know I'll be there. I'll probably be gagging from the buffet, but I'll be there.

And, yes, I've been back for almost a month and not writing. This has to do with the new job and The Sickness, which keeps me on the couch crocheting and watching ET (Want details about the big Tomkat wedding? I've got it all!). My friend Jen has encouraged me to share details about what Paul is now calling "the miracle of life" and "my journey to the center of womanhood," so that will all be coming soon. Meantime, the "blossom of my future happiness" has me in a stranglehold. Unfortunately, even thinking that word pops the song into my head. Now it's like a tiny Ted Nugent, fierce from a diet of fresh blood, is stabbing my uterus with its widdy-biddy hunting knife. Yogurt smoothie? Unh-uh. Vomit that, bee-atch.

Where did you sleep last night?

2006-09-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

I slept here. It’s my last night on the bus. I’m still here on the floor of the service stop (using the only outlet in the place… my battery is shot), and am finally caught up (!). In five minutes, we drive to New York City.

Providence is...

2006-09-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

Lovely. You'll have to take my word for it, because I have no photos. I was too distracted by the fact that I walked around for two hours (Brown, RISD, historic settlement houses), in pain, looking for a public (or any) restroom. As a bonus, I did find the Roger Williams memorial park, where he used to gather the settlers, and I remember that I had a little crush on him in elementary school. Oh, those 17th-century, colonial crusaders for religious freedom and church/state separation.

Battle in Boston: Typewriters v. Johnsons (Thursday)

2006-09-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

This week we’ve been listening to Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. On the drive into Buffalo, we heard the show on weather. On the way to Boston, we heard a show on dads (when he said happy Father’s Day, I panicked before I remembered it was September, and a Thursday.) Driving through bucolic central MA, we heard songs about weddings. When Bill was maneuvering through the Harvard campus and Somerville, MA at the height of rush hour, we heard the divorce show, and about Bill’s divorce. He’s got a rough job.

During the intermission, a twitchy guy in his late 40s/early 50s came up to the table demanding to know who was in charge. His band was coming on at 10:00 (it is now 8:15) and we “need to get that shit off the stage so they can load in.” (“That shit” was the set and props for The Typing Explosion.) A guy asked about his band, who they are. “We’re a cover band,” he said, “The Swinging Johnsons. We play here Thursdays.”

Eight of us slept in a giant loft in Southie with Michael Brodeur and his neighbor with the repeating car alarm.

Life on the Bus

2006-09-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

What do we do on the bus?
Talk about poetry.
Laugh at Bob Dylan on XM Radio.
Sleep.
Write poems together.
Eat trail mix and apples from the snack coffin.
Drink Jack Daniels and/or VO from giant bottles.
Hug bus friend (see photo, left).
Sleep.
Read.
Update our blogs.
Talk about how great/strange the reading was last night.
Stare out the window.
Sleep.

Two days in Western Mass (Emily, the Girls, and Three Little Boys)

2006-09-30T06:27:00.000-07:00

Smith College
Walking around Smith is like walking into a campus melodrama from the 1950s. If it weren’t for the day-glo green and orange triangle furniture in the seven sisters’ equivalent of a student union, it could just as easily be 1925.

Quick Tour: Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire College, Amherst Commons, UMass
At each location, the poets read outside the bus with a portable PA. At Hampshire (Joshua Beckman’s alma mater), we weren’t authorized to come on campus. Bill drove us through the grounds, while Joshua shouted through a bullhorn, “Students of Hampshire College, come and listen to the poets.” By the third curve, campus security was already on us. Joshua got off the bus to talk to them and we were all laughing about how we were busted, but the officer said, “We have a place for you, follow us” and they led us to the middle of the lawn. We’re pretty subversive.

Emily’s Room
I hate it when people refer to great literary figures, who happen to be women, by their first names (Hemingway, Proust, Shakespeare… Emily), but it’s common with ED, and generally from the mouths of women. I caught myself doing it. The bus parked in Amherst five minutes from her house, and I said, “I’m going down to Emily’s house.”

I had this fantasy about standing in her room: how I’d be paralyzed with inspiration, how I’d look out the same window she did, how I’d weep from the tragic, claustrophobic isolation. Like many author houses, you have to take a tour to see The Room. I just missed the 2:30 30-minute tour and spent 25 minutes trying to convince the docents at the Dickinson Homestead that I needed to see The Room.

I studied her in grad school.
I know all about the fascicles and variants.
I’m here with the poetry bus.
I’m only in Amherst for 30 minutes.

The first docent explained that I could look at “these three rooms,” which consisted of a display about publication history (which was really just pictures of her literary executors), pictures of life in the kitchen, and a gift shop. She pointed me to the window so I could see The Room from outside.

The 90-minute tour guide, a patient woman with a slight English accent, agreed that I could just go on the first part of her tour, the main house, but that would be 50 minutes. I asked if she could just tell me a little about The Room. She pointed me to the window so I could see it from outside. Then she spent three minutes telling me the real estate history of the house. I am now glad I don’t have time for the tour. It reminds me of when I volunteered for the Hemingway Museum and Birthplace Home in Oak Park, IL, where many of the docents were retired moms who spent most of the tour talking about Hem’s poor, maligned mother.

This is as close as I got to Emily’s room.

When I got back to the bus, no one was there, so I wandered down to the cemetery.

I came back to the bus again and no one was there. I made the bank deposit and handed out a bunch of stickers and tattoos to the youth punks hanging out in the park. One of them informed me that “poetry is cool.”

At the UMass quick stop, two boys, Matt and Jimmy, showed off their tattos.

I stayed in historic Turners Falls for two nights with Janelle, the Eastern Wave Books version of me. We ate here and found this poem

Montreal, Too Quickly (Monday)

2006-09-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

My favorite stop and, sadly, I have to make it quick to keep up.

As usual, we are starving when we arrive.

bon jour, un cream of broccoli soup si vous plait

Matthew found a teahouse with wifi, so I camped out there for about two hours. If you got an email from me a few days ago, that's where I was.

(Montreal walk-ups)

Our local helper (awesome poet/organizer Kate Hall), arranged for me to stay with her friend Fiona on the French side of the city, by the old Olympic stadium, built in 1976, which the city is still paying for. All cities really are the same.

In the morning, Fiona and Leroy walked me to the Metro station. We ran into Fiona's neighbor, who told us a lively story in French about Janet Jackson. Apparently she was dancing on the Oprah show. "Oh, that crazy family," she said in English.

On the rush hour green line, I rode seven (or so) stops to Place-des-Arts, and got a two-second look at the contemporary art museum and theater district before I had to hop in a cab to get back to the bus.

le bus, le autobus, ici ici

Travis recapped our border adventures nicely on the pobus blog.

Oh, Canada; Oh, Blurry Pictures (Sunday)

2006-09-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

In Ottawa, the poets read across from the glowing House of Parliament at sunset. Between the load-in and everyone clamoring to buy our fabulous books and t-shirts, this is the best photo I got.

(Linus interviewing Joshua for the pobus film)

Toronto’s New Bohemians (Saturday)

2006-09-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

One of the guests at the pre-reading bbq told us this is a working class neighborhood. I believed it at first: the rows of old houses, kids and old people in the yards, the apparent lack of an ATM that works.

Our reading was at Stones Place, a Rolling Stones theme bar with the requisite collection of Mick posters, signed copies of Sticky Fingers, and paintings of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan (?).
One of our local helpers told us Keith Richards painted them, and all became clear.

We parallel parked and slept in front of Damien Rogers’ house on the bus. I woke up every couple of hours (because I had to pee) and saw a red light glowing from a white building at the end of the block. In the morning, I walked down to see what this spectacle was all about. This wasn’t a bar, or a brothel, it was a condo building in progress. Watch out, Meritage.

Enjoy the fine copy:
Anchoring the west end of Toronto's hippest strip comes a condominium so stylish and cool, it promises to redefine the way this city's hipsters live. Join the ambassadors of hip on Queen Street West at Gladstone, renowned for the famous Drake Hotel and home of the soon-to-be equally eminent Bohemian Embassy. … the ultimate place for culture-loving urbanites to BE.

Obviously, a very close replica of the original Bohemian Embassy, a coffee shop from the 1960s where Margaret Atwood used to hang out and where some Beat-ish people had a Dada-style happening in 1963.

Come on Back to Me 22 (Saturday, September 23)

2006-09-30T05:39:00.000-07:00

Tired of Vegas?? Try Niagara! The Canada side, that is.

Monica F.'s really nice Georgia mom treated us to lunch at the Fallsview Casino Resort Grand Buffet. I had a cheese omelet, potsticker, creme puff dipped in chocolate fondue, small salad, an apple danish, and veggie lasagna.

Convergence and Buffalo Wings

2006-09-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

After slowly waking up in my posh Bucknell guest room (tv, wifi, shower, privacy... thanks, Betsy!), I missed breakfast, but the poets in residence packed up a fruit salad for us, and we were off to Buffalo--through the beautiful Susquehanna Valley--land of motion sickness.

We pulled up to the Albright-Knox Gallery 40 minutes before the reading. Gallery is a loose term. This is more like a largish contemporary-ish art museum. I hurried in with my good friend, box-of-t-shirts, made a wrong turn, and ran into Pollock's 8'x13' Convergence.

After the reading we went to a bar and grill near Buffalo State College for a little food, including Buffalo's specialty... the 8-inch high pile of wings.

Encounter with drunk girls in the bathroom taking phone-camera pictures of each other:
Girl1: Come on. That's enough. I want to go flirt some more.
Girl2: I really hope Carrie isn't here with Michael. That bitch stole my vocabulary. I started saying Snoogy Snoog five months ago and now she says it all the time.

We slept on the bus. Around 2am it was pouring rain and I had to pee, but we were in the middle of a parking lot. Bladder-denial would become a familiar trend, at least for a few days.

In the morning I became obsessed with this vintage DONT WALK sign. (To give you an idea, I have 10 pictures of this and no good pictures of my friends on the bus yet.)

It was still raining. While Joshua and I sat in the cargo space under the bus counting the books to prep for crossing the border (of course, they never asked us about them, but we had no idea), Anthony catches a cab to the airport. (We're sad. Monica, Monica, and Betsy get on the bus, and we try to make them feel a little less disoriented, although we all know that's impossible.)

**This all happened a week ago. We're in Boston now and off soon to Providence. More soon.**

one more quick story from Pittsburg

2006-09-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

Two poets are in the alley just around the corner from the bus...

Cop: Where are you from?
Joshua: Seattle
Cop: Sorry about the Superbowl, man.

Let's all move to Pittsburg

2006-09-22T06:48:00.001-07:00

Hundreds of cheap, old buildings=affordable artist studios. That's what I'm talking about. (Sorry... just watched Dazed and Confused a few times before I left on my trip.)

Our reading was part of the Gist Street Reading Series, which has been going on in this amazing space for about five years.

(actual poets, actually reading poetry... Anthony and Joshua)

In fact, we liked it so much, we slept there.

Michigan seems like a dream to me now

2006-09-22T06:21:00.000-07:00

The whole day in Ann Arbor, I was dealing with smug students--they took up all the plug-in spots at the Internet cafe to read or take naps, they were rude to me when I asked for help in stores, and they seemed generally intolerant of anyone not in khaki shorts and a sweatshirt. (Argh... I hate college students.)

At the reading, most of the audience was between the ages of 18 and 21. I was outside the whole time, peddling the wares, and the fact that I was standing behind a table + my age put me in a position of apparent authority b/c they kept asking me things like

how long will this last?
can I leave and come back?
can I go in now?

I found myself tempted to mess with people over the last question, guarding the door and choreographing their entrances. This reminds me that students still tend to defer to authority, even though they'll complain about it constantly. (I love college students.)

After the reading we went to Baps, a basement bar that "looks like a dentist office" (according to the guy who invited us there). Their entire food menu consisted of Goldfish, so I snuck across the street to the Fleetwood Diner, where I sat at the lunch counter and enjoyed a tuna melt and a glass of milk. The waitress was leisurely smoking and grousing to a yellow-orange-haired girl at the end of the bar about her woman studies classes ("I'm trying to get into grad school; I need a rigorous academic program; it's heartbreaking me, it's absolutely heartbreaking me.") And this reminds me of another thing I love about college students, the absolute vision of a hopeful future, and the complete indignation toward anyone who would get in the way. When I paid, I finally got a good look at her face, black eyelined and completely wrinkle free. I was looking at someone from another universe, one I can't inhabit but can appreciate from a distance, sometimes even without condescension. (Love KOs hate every time.)

When I got back to Baps, our local helper introduced me to Julia, a first-year MFA student in her second week who was generous and flexible enough to let a total stranger enjoy her comfy couch--anything for a writer, she said, and I felt sad to tell her I was just an intern, and that I hadn't read.

Americanese Made Easy

2006-09-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

An enthusiastic Milwaukeean near-poet (too shy and/or drunk to open mic) approaches me at the merch table at Linneman's Bar. After testing my interest in the literary theories he's invented (words are symbols, hmmm, that is new...I'm working, I'm feigning), he wants to show me "the longest poem ever written." (Homer, Dante, Milton, Milwaukee bar guy). He brings over a bound stack. It looks like a script for a six-hour film. He tells me to pick a common phrase, flips to the w page, and orders me to read:

waiting for the other shoe to fall
waiting in line for no one
waiting in the rain

"It has over 163,000 phrases and 1300 are my own. I call it Americanese Made Easy. I also thought about Phrases for Dummies, but that's not as good." I try to engage him in a discussion about OULIPO. I write it in Sharpie on the back of a poetry bus sticker. He tells me he doesn't really go on the internets. Then he tells me a story about how he cut his toe a few months ago on the lid of a cat food can and bled all over the kitchen.

Night two: on the road, Milwaukee to Ann Arbor
Morning two: no shower

arrived at Ann Arbor, Michigan around 8am and drove around for an hour looking for a place to park the bus... Now in a wireless cafe with all the college students and my electronics plugged in and charging (except the camera... its cord is buried with my big suitcase on the bus, which is currently closed so the driver can get some sleep).

where the bus is now...

Night one: Yogi Bear campground, Ft. Atkinson, WI

2006-09-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

We left the Green Mill Sunday night around 11:30pm and drove until 2 am. I woke up a little after 7am here.

Morning one: nice shower (ahhh... using my wash rag and last night's t-shirt for a towel)

Highlight: While a few of us were out for a round of mini-golf, one of the remaining poets saw a family drive by in a golf cart. The 8-year-old girl said, "Mommy, that bus is creepy."

just a little routine messing up the minds of the citizenry en route

and a few photos near Blackhawk Island, which isn't really an island...

poetry bus sparks lazyass to start a blog

2006-09-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

Hi! I'm writing from the lovely Chicago-Rosemont Holiday Inn Select, enjoying the cable tv and workout spa before I embark on 17 days of bus fun (replete with couch crashing).

Because this is a super low-budget jaunt, I booked my flights with miles (thank you, China!), which placed me comfortably in the middle seat for both. My neighbor on the SF to Chicago leg was a quiet woman in an uncomfortable-looking poly-blend black suit. She didn't bring anything to do, clearly, so she spent the first hour of the flight pulling tiny specks of lint off her suit and picking at the skin around her nails. Then she found the headphones. She put them on and leaned back. And started conducting. Think elementary school music teacher: raised arms, swirling fingertips, aptly timed points to the cymbal. This makes me think of Whitman, just a little,

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear

I wonder what Whitman would have thought of the rightbite snack pack with its assortment of minis (yes, this is our in-flight meal...only $5!).

I am large, I contain multitudes of all natural pita chips and light 'n fit smoothies.