blue girl

M.A. Peel's Cinematic Moment

I went to Rutgers College, and lived for two years in town, on Bayard Street, near the train tracks. In the few seconds we were flying by, the sense of the deeply ingrained familiar drew my eye right to the window of my old apartment, straight on into my old kitchen.

There I was sitting at the kitchen table, as I often did to study, and in that instant, my twenty-year old self looked up from her book.

Our eyes met. My head was spinning. I tried to smile at her, but all I could muster was amazement. She smiled, but I realized it was a reaction to something she had just read, not to me. She had no idea she was glimpsing part of her future.

She looked happy and healthy. Suddenly she got up to answer the phone. It was "the call." That terrible call.

Read all of M.A.'s An Occurrence on the Acela to D.C.

That's Life

Just felt like sending out some positive energy into the universe, Sinatra-style.

***

I deleted that post about how much Larry Jones hates advertising. I hate advertising, too. So, the whole thing was a big, fat lie! When I deleted the post, your comments were deleted, too. Don't be sad. I'll always remember them fondly.

There are things going on around here that are making it hard for me to think straight. I'm not feeling much like blogging. You know, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't, yadda, yadda, yadda. Right now, I don't. So, just in case I'm feeling less like a nut for awhile, I didn't want that hateful post up top, I wanted the positive energy of that song.

Ok, gonna close now. Time to make the doughnuts...

***
p.s. You know I wanted to work in every single advertising tag line from this page into my post. I really wanted to! But, I don't have time. I need to get working on some more Offer Ends Soon! copy.

Feel the Love, Part Two, "Sitting on a Corn Flake"

Yesterday morning The Skimmer and I got up early. We were in the living room, drinking coffee when I asked, "Are you gonna go get a paper?"

The Skimmer whined, "Why do I have to be the one to go get the paper?"

"Because it's Mother's Day!"

"Oh. Yeah. Happy Mother's Day!"

"It's my day!"

"I know."

"All day long."

"I know."

"Till midnight!"

"All right."

"I can do whatever I want."

"How uncommon!"

It was a total love fest for the rest of the day.

Now, continuing on with Part Two of The Top 100 Things I Love. Which now will be completed in "parts" because I was so pleasantly surprised by a visit from my mother-in-law on Saturday when I wasn't even dressed. When there was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. When I hadn't even bought her a Mother's Day gift yet. Feel the love!

11. I love to turn it up to 11. It's one louder.

12. I love the memory of being at a Grand Prix race with my family about ten years ago. It was a hot and humid summer day and we got there early, as did most of the other fans. It was already packed. We got our seats in the stands on some...turn and everyone around us was already well into their first six pack of Budweiser. There was a group of guys sitting in front of us, well into their 30s. And probably their second six pack of Budweiser. Shirts off, sunburned, tattoos of this and that all over the place. When the announcer said, "Gentlemen, start....your....engines!" Those guys jumped up and were all exactly like Puddy at about 23 seconds into this video. It was so funny. I loved it.

The rest of the race? Pretty much like watching traffic. Watching the sunburned guys was way more fun.

13. I love when I'm driving and get to the end of a school zone and can punch the gas. I really have no patience.

14. I love Augusten Burroughs. His new book, A Wolf at the Table, is out and I don't have it yet! (Did no one think of me yesterday? At all?)

I can't wait to get it. I was so disappointed when I was finished with his last book, Possible Side Effects.

A reviewer wrote of that one...

He fattens up the material—a (Frey-inspired?) disclaimer warns some events have been "expanded and changed"—in ways that sometimes ring false, especially in his childhood reminiscences, which are improbably detailed and infused with an adult sense of camp.

I can't believe people didn't realize Burroughs hasn't always been able to outdo James Frey when it comes to "expanding and changing" talents. It was pretty obvious to me when I read "Dry" and "Running with Scissors" years ago, when James Frey was merely dreaming of making Oprah. Doesn't matter to me that Burroughs Frey's it. Like the reviewer also said, "...when he steps outside his head no one is funnier or more perceptive."

Bingo.

Another reviewer wrote...

Augusten Burroughs offers a post James Frey "dishonesty disclaimer" (New York Times) at the beginning of Possible Side Effects, a provocation that has reviewers scouring the essay collection for signs of the improbable.

Scouring? Really?

15. I love fresh basil. I love it, I love it, I love it.

16. I love music. On Saturday, while driving around, I loved "I Am the Walrus" most of all for some reason. I played it over and over (please see No. 11 above).

Sitting on a cornflake
waiting for the van to come.
Corporation tee-shirt
stupid bloody Tuesday
Man, you been a naughty boy
you let your face grow long

Not even close to my favorite Beatles' song. But, please don't ask me what that would be. That's too hard.

Goo goo g'joob

17. I love a big breakfast on Sunday mornings. Like I had yesterday with my mom, as we celebrated Mother's Day, just the two of us at a nearby restaurant. Wish my sister would've been there. Didn't love that she wasn't.

18. I love this picture I took in New York City on my last trip. It was the last shot I took from the back of the taxi as I was leaving for the airport.

Through rain? Or my tears?

19. I love this post from Tbogg. It's how I will lovingly remember, for all of time, how I felt about the 2008 Democratic primary.

20. I loved this moment from the weekend:

It was late Friday night. Blue Kid and his friends were in his room doing whatever it is that teenagers do, The Skimmer was half asleep on the couch downstairs and I was in my office upstairs. All of a sudden, I heard BK and his friends run out of his room. From the top of the stairs Blue Kid was yelling...

“Dad? Dad?! DAD!??!

I was thinking, Oh my God, what is it?! He continued...

“Dad!!!!”

The Skimmer yelled, “WHAT??!”

And then in a very casual voice, Blue Kid asked, “Where’s Scotland?”

***

And that ends Part Two of The Top 100 Things I Love list. Gotta get to work. We actually have some! Gotta love that.

High Five

On the flip side.

Feel the Love, Part One, "Carlton the Doorman's No Longer With Us"

#9 updated below.

I'm going to do the opposite of Jaquandor and list the Top 100 Things I Love. Because I'm a rebel! And because it's more fun to think about love than what bugs me. So, here goes.

1. I love rainbows.

2. I love ponies.

What? You don’t love rainbows and ponies? You’re the type of person that, after a thunderstorm on a warm summer afternoon, looks up in the sky, sees a rainbow and says to themselves, “God! What an idiotic, ugly rainbow. I hope to never see anything as idiotic and ugly again in my whole entire life!” Is that you? The you that would be the same type of you who would punch a pony in the face if it meandered up to you?

Here’s a poem by Charles Bukowski for those yous out there:

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

3. I love home-made prom dresses and sugar-rolled grapes.

4. I love the word serendipity. How the word sounds and what the word means.

5. I love this excerpt from the introduction, written by Mark Vonnegut, in Kurt Vonnegut’s new book, Armageddon In Retrospect.

He often said he had to be a writer because he wasn’t good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950s, he was employed by Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that had jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence,” and walked out, self-employed again.

6. I love to think Kurt Vonnegut would have probably said, referring to the Bukowski poem above, “Let people see the damn bluebird already.”

7. I love this photo the hangs above my desk.

8. I love whistling the theme song to Taxi.

9. I loved Carlton the Doorman’s voice. And I love when I hear his voice on a commercial nowadays. I'm like, "Hey! That's Carlton the Doorman! I'm glad he's gettin' work."

Update: I regret to inform you, as a friend just informed me, that Carlton the Doorman, aka Lorenzo Music, aka Gerald David Music, died in 2001. He will live on, though, in my house.

Every time our cats are scratching the back door to get in, I walk over and open the door. Do they come in? No. They just stand there and stare at me. Yawn. Stretch. Rub the side of their faces against the door frame. Turn to look at birds, etc.

And I'm always like, "What do I look like?! Carlton the Doorman? Get in here already!"

RIP Lorenzo Music.

10. I love when David Puddy’s face pops in my head, all dry, dumb-luggish, squinty and cute.

“High five.”

I love when The Skimmer pops his head in my office to tell me my mother-in-law's on her way over and I'm sitting here in my robe, laughing, thinking of David Puddy. Like he just did. Feel the love, everyone!

....The Top 100 Things I Love to be continued.

Butter Your Bread Child

Click here to read about the local weather in Iowa City.

Field of Trees

I've been escaping to the park lately. This field, which overlooks the Cuyahoga Valley is absolutely breathtaking. And peaceful.

One of these days, I'm going to have to get out of my car and actually walk around through the park instead of just driving through it.

Oh yeah. Lone coyotes and possibly....geese. Maybe not.

Two BG's

One more and I could start a band. Ba-da-bum!

I've been cloned by a really small fish.

New York Snapshots

Claire has posted a few photos from her recent trip to New York City. Looking at them immediately makes my mind start churning. When can I get there, when can I get there, when can I get there...

Not for awhile. Sigh.

Here's a shot I took last summer, somewhere in Soho or Greenwich Village.

Go look at Claire's fabulous NYC photos.

Jacquandor is Bugged and More!!!!!!!

Jacquandor has posted a list of 100 things that bug him. He thinks he's going soft because it took him more than a week to come up with the list. It would take me a lot longer than that. And not because there aren't hundreds of things that bug me, right at this very instant, as a matter of fact, but because when I intentionally start trying to make a list of any sort that another blogger has suggested, I go blank. But, that won't stop me from thinking about what bugs me constantly for the next few weeks. Hopefully, some time in June, I'll have my own Bug Me List up.

Here are a few things that bug Jacquandor:

31. All those idiots at the movie theaters when each Star Wars prequel came out. Look, if you decided that George Lucas sucked and that you hated him and his work, fine, but that doesn't excuse trying to turn a movie theater into your own personal MST3K forum. If you don't like a movie, shut up. If you like a movie, shut up. Just shut up.

36. Oh, and thanks a lot, you Homeland Security nitwits, for making it more annoying for us to go to Toronto. I'm sure that tons of stuff that would have been blown up by terrorists otherwise is still standing because you're all vigilantly giving people like me the skunk-eye when we try to come home.

41. I love showing my ID at the pharmacy counter and signing an official form every time I get sick and need to buy some Mucinex, and I'm sure this is turning around the crucial battle on the meth-heads.

53. Why is Survivor still on teevee? Why? Why why why?!

57. Where the $&#^!! is my Wonder Woman movie!!!

Go read the rest of what bugs, annoys, or fills Jacquandor with rage.

Yes, rage! He tries to deny it, but I've always believed that the use of multiple exclamation points indicates a certain amount of rage!!!!!!!

Feel free to complain about what bugs you in the comment thread.