Boo!

Happy Birthday to Whitman, the world's most badass three year old. May you rule Madison as well as your father one day.

Halloween

As I listened to Ethan talk to his brother about their Halloween memories, and about their shared dislike of pumpkin carving, I thought of a year that takes on a whole new meaning now that I'm an adult.

My sister and I each got pumpkins to carve every year. There are tons of pictures of us at the pumpkin patches. One year we carved Bert and Ernie pumpkins, and each of us picked our pumpkins based on our favorite of those two characters. My pumpkin was short and round and was Ernie, and Dana's was tall and oval and was Bert. It only hit me now that our personalities match those choices as well.

The pumpkins looked really cool, too.

My Sister is the Greatest Volume III:

Wherein obscure 90's C-list celebs who later married 80s C-list celebs are referenced while mocking the genetic lot of a newly omnipresent celebutot,

Corngirl521: you know what is hilarious? apparently after singing a few songs at a concert, he totally started ripping on jessica simpsonm
meredithlynnec: nick?
Corngirl521: yeah
meredithlynnec: man that's good stuff
meredithlynnec: did you see how she said that she knew it was over when he didn't go to africa with her for her stupid charity?
meredithlynnec: also, WTF with Rumer Willis' chin?
Corngirl521: yeah. what a bitch-ass charity to be associated with
Corngirl521: what about her chin? did she get it done?
meredithlynnec: no, it's just so damn huge
Corngirl521: oh yeah
Corngirl521: she and casper van dien would have horribly freakish children

PS: The Oxenbergs were a great gravy train to hitch to. How Grace Kelly of you.

Ills and their cure

So I'm laid out with a terrible cold/flu/plague thing, with Arrested Development Season 1 and my knitting as my only entertainment. Also, the therapeutic benefits of a hot shower are being denied me because the hot water has not worked since Maintenance turned on our heat yesterday.

On the plus side, my dear friend Eric is in the Twin Cities and I will get to see him and catch up after a long period of radio silence. I can't wait to go get boozed up with him.

Wanted

A friend in Minneapolis who has cable and will let me watch Battlestar Galactica at their house on Friday nights.

California Bitches

(Directed in particular to a woman in Davis whose name I don't know): You are not on The Real World. In the non-MTV "real world," people do not sit their roommates down for a talk about cleaning styles and then spring on them a well thought out manifesto on why you can't stand them. That, in case you are confused, is what normal adults tend to call "cunt-ass bitch" behavior. There is no excuse for cruelty one month into any relationship, romantic, cohabitational, academic, or work-related. If I hear any more about it I am coming out there to kick your butt across the International Date Line. The swim in the Pacific should give my dear tormented friend some much needed peace.

Update: I really am a quitter

I did end up dropping the class, and the only thing I learned from the experience is that "learning experiences" cost more the more you try to learn from them. What a waste of hundreds of dollars.

Emeritus Punk

I sat down to my regular Sunday ritual of diving into the New York Times arts-section-first and discovered yet another Minneapolis-centric article written by Kelefa Sanneh. Like any good current Minneapolis resident who lived in Brooklyn during 2005, I love the Hold Steady(I credit Ms. Lauren with first showing me their awesomeness). Aside from a little confusion about why the author so desperately loves Minneapolis(confidential to Mr. Sanneh-I'll trade places with you if you like it here so much. No, no, it's no trouble. I understand how completely inferior New York is to MPLS in every way), I enjoyed reading it.

After I'd finished, I thought for a while about the bars I've loved in Madison and Minneapolis over the years. The list includes some dank holes in the wall, although none of them could accurately be called dive bars. They weren't faux-dive either; at one time many years ago they had been genuinely rough places frequented by bikers and tattooed characters who weren't afraid to meet you out back with a metal pipe and a chain. The days when the C. C. Club, the Paradise, the Caribou, and the Wisco hosted pissed of punks and derelicts are long gone; now former cheerleaders with artfully applied streaks of Manic Panic pull their Marlboro Lights out of Coach bags on their way outside to get their nicotine fix. Even with the smoking bans and the addition of digital jukeboxes that list the latest Xzibit track next to "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline," these places still feel invitingly gruff.

These places are immune to sanitization as long as they can afford to keep their doors open. You can't get the smoke smell and grime out after 30 years, and there is always at least one man(or woman) who looks like they haven't left their bar stool since 1970. My friends and I don't go to today's "dive bars" because they don't have any other place they feel comfortable; we drink beer and drink in the history of violence and working class frustration to forget for a while that the United States is more prosperous than perhaps any other society in the history of civilization and that we, with out college and graduate degrees and our white collar jobs, live absurdly close to the top of the heap. We pay homage to the old masters, the Emeritus Punk that is home to IFC tv shows, WCW screenwriting credits, and tips on how to make your brand new band t-shirt look like you bought it in 1981(even if you don't look old enough to have been a fetus that year). Hell, even in the old days these places weren't their legends. My father played pinball at the Paradise during his lunch all through the mid-70s, clad in a suit and chatting with his State Government bureaucrat friends.

Don't think for a moment that I would trade my dive bar nostalgia for something "more authentic." I'm way too white and bourgeois for hip hop, which, as the New York Times tells me, is the new punk rock(an assertion I'm loathe to entertain). I'll order my PBR because I want it, not because I'm skeptical of the microbrews on tap next to it, and I'll play my favorite Cheap Trick song because I like the band, and I'll prove to anyone, Frat Boy or Harley head, that I am a force to be reckoned with at pool. I like feeling like a part of a continuum more than feeling on the cutting edge, and it's nice to someplace where the pretense is brought in by the customers and not built into the booths. At least then you can drown your disdain in your rail whiskey in your own corner, and maybe you can befriend another paton who isn't cool enough for the current scene.

Making Connections

I have a friend, we'll call him Nintendo, and he remembers his childhood days playing in the old neighborhood with his best friend the Paperboy. They lost track of each other as they grew up and Nintendo drifted into idleness and Paperboy kept working, determined to create a better future than the one that awaited him in the 'hood. He doesn't know what to do to locate him; last we heard, Paperboy was selling himself for a fraction of what he's worth at a store in the Minneapolis area, but we don't know which one. Does anyone know how I can help these two lost souls once again?

If you know where a used NES game might be prostituting itself, please let me know. Nintendo's happiness, and my own, are riding on it.

Damn the perserverance!

I didn't drop it, and I'll probably stay in it till the bitter end. I can't let those entitled acting stoned twits beat me. Sure, I'll never have someone set aside a spot for me at a top school, but I can at least give it a shot. And rejection will give me an excuse for some kick ass partying.

I + Econ = Dumb

I'm dropping the course I registered for. I still have to pay for some of it, because I didn't realize my total and complete lack of understanding of the subject was probably a sign I would fare poorly, but I just can't do it. Grad school was a good idea while it seemed possible.

Identity Theft, etc.

A Message to the woman who stole my kid sister's identity:

Fuck you. I'm going to find you and beat you to the point of death and then leave you at an ER after supergluing your driver's license to your forehead. $40? You screwed her credit over $40? I'm going to find you, and you WILL PAY. We're talking a pound of flesh, bitch.

In other news, I just heard a Beth Gibbons song covered by Jane Birkin that rocked my world. I want to be as cool as Jane Birkin when I'm 60, and I want to create something as awesome as her work with Serge Gainesbourg. Ethan would be a great Serge.

Finally, someone, please watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip for me and tell me which of Sorkin's old programs he rips off in the first episode. I'm hoping for a shout out to N'tanake Nelson, personally...

Milk Carton

Have you seen this woman? We have experienced a total loss of technological signal, with search technology ranging over email, internet, and satellite voice identification tracking turning up nothing. I suspect a pack of super-intelligent trolls has come out of hiding in Prospect Park and kidnapped her during a routine stroll, but others (ahem) have suggested political reasons. The cause is immaterial, what is important is that we find her before the time-traveling Apaches mistake her for Jesse James. If a trap must be laid, try smoked salmon and fresh tomato. And brie. Works every time.

Dreading the history

I realize now that I should have taken all these painkillers and sat in my pjs tomorrow while everyone does 9/11 stuff. I'm too loopy to comment on it. Just, uck.

Fall

Today was the first 100% cloudy, cold day. The wind has been whistling outside, the air is sharp, and it's finally pitch black outside after making it all the way to pewter this afternoon. Autumn is my favorite season, but it frightens me this year. Last winter even the most basic rhythms of life became close to unbearable, and it took half of this year and all of the spring and summer to feel normal again, and even that is fragile. I'm not exactly sure what happened last year, why I made the decisions I did, or why everything went so terribly wrong. This fall there aren't any big decisions to make, nothing to run to or from, no urges that feel uncontrollable. But I worry. Maybe the 9 to 5 and my new exercise habit and my cooking and my class and my knitting projects and my grad school applications and my slowly returning desire to write won't be enough, maybe they'll be too much.

UPDATE: I've managed to go to two parties since I wrote the above, and I'm feeling a bit better, but I know that is just the alcohol talking and not my confidence. I'm in the midst of playing nurse to Ethan, still, after he broke his wrist trying to protect us from loud music last night(the paramedics came to our house and he made a death rattle/snoring sound. It was AMAZING, and a little hilarious, although only after the fact). I have to make him some tea, and then we are going to bed. More later, my lovelies.

In A Nutshell

Katie Couric's prime time, history-making evening news debut featured the unveiling of SURI CRUISE photos. Yes, she's real, and we managed to get demonstrative proof of that and of the necrophiliac rape of television news all at the same time.

SURI CRUISE PHOTOS!!!!!!! Where I come from, Entertainment Tonight comes on an hour AFTER the national news. How did they mess that address up?

I hate the world and hope that someone blows it up, and soon. I would also accept it if Edward R. Murrow's zombified corpse ate Katie Couric's brains on air before rampaging through the rest of the CBS building, singlehandedly avenging decades of sensationalism, pandering, and the most blatant act of bottom line over quality ever. There are others that I would like to see him eat, although I will leave that list for later. Maybe just the top 5:

1. John Stossel of ABC. If you've ever seen 20/20, you know why. If not, just trust me.
2. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, and I want him alive and on air for the whole thing. If I don't see his spirit leave his body I'm not satisfied.
3. Miles O'Brien of CNN, but just because he's a douchebag.
4. That guy who hosts NBC News on the weekends. I just don't like the look of him.
5. Sway of MTV News. The Hair. Just for the hair. And his delivery. And his stupid Rasta hat. And his stupid questions for the 2004 Presidential candidates. And his name is Sway. You sir, are no Tabitha Soren. You are not even Serena Altschul. I hope Gideon Yago skullfucks you after Ed has sucked out your eyeballs.

Steve Irwin, epic hero

My sister sent me a text message this afternoon that said simply, "Odysseus died of a stringray barb to the heart too!"

In addition to this Wikipedia sanctioned story, Odysseus also died a "gentle death by sea," which in less poetic parts is explained to be the cruel serrated point of a stingray's tail.

My sister is even now explaining to me the difference in the two different myths and why they both exist, but I will leave you with this-the State Funeral that the Premier offered poor Terry is far more apropos than I ever thought.

Rest in Peace Steve, and enjoy your wild animal baiting with Heracles and your death-sake O-dog.

Ugh

A Labor Day White Trash Potluck has led to some serious hangover stupids(Damn you Cabana Boy Jello Shots! Damn you to hell!). I'm making pickles, and I think I've managed to screw them up, which makes me want to cry because this recipe makes the greatest pickles known to Man. Also, we've been suckered into hosting Ethan's fantasy football draft, so the house smells a bit like vinegar and there are going to be a dozen people expecting food and drink and I am not going to provide it.

I have found the Holy Grail of hangover food, right here in Minneapolis, and it is not deep fried and on a stick. It is the Stuffed Omelette Antoine's Creole Restaurant in Uptown. An omelette with anduille sausage, peppers, tomato, onion, and jalapeno hash browns INSIDE THE OMELETTE. It is, without a doubt, the greatest thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. I can't wait to go back and eat it again.

I don't know what kind of magic the proprietress of this restaurant works on her food, but it is uniformly delicious. The pancakes are magically fluffy, nothing is too greasy, their catfish is amazing, there is spice but not too much spice, and the selection is huge. I wanted to try everything on the menu, from the crawfish omelette to the po-boy. If it has the sausage, though, it is not to be missed. Better than Bratwurst.

And it was cheap. The total was 20 dollars. I have a new favorite restaurant.

Promises, promises

I never did come through with that Simon Reeve interview, did I? I suppose the least I can do is put a link to his Guardian article.

Welcome, sir

Jake is a cool guy. He let me shoot warm lime-flavored vodka into his mouth at his birthday party(using a squirt gun). He is not a hipster. He has a blog. Check it out.