That Total Age

So today is my good friend Kansas Jolie’s* thirtieth birthday. She seems to be handling it like a champ, which to my mind, is the only sane reaction. I mean, you HAVE to get drunk — only on your 21st is the Universal Shitfaced Imperative stronger — and we’re all gonna make sure of that, don’t you worry. But she doesn’t appear to be freaking out.

And really, folks, there’s no point in flipping your shit over turning 30. It’s either that, or death, and I’m gonna take the “birthday” option every time.

Of course, it’s got me thinking about when I turned 30, in the frigid January of 2004. It was … perfectly OK. I took the day off of work, treated myself to a leisurely solo brunch at my favorite breakfast place, puttered around North Beach, bought a kickass wig, had a cocktail or two, got a massage, got taken to drinks and a fabulous dinner by Mr. Gleemonex, got some of the most excellent presents ever, and also never-you-mind. There was some sort of partay with the gang of fools as well. So, plenty of mayhem. But I was honestly relieved to be not 29 anymore (I have a Thing about numbers, as to whether I find them aesthetically pleasing or not, and “29” is not a Good Number; 26, 27, 28 are; 30 is; 31 is not; 32 and 33 are; 34 is not … etc.). Plus 29 just seemed … on the cusp, not fully committed to anything, trying too hard.

And I have so far LOVED my thirties. All I ever wanted when I was a kid was to be an adult. I never thought I was special for being under 30 — my 20s were good years, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t pine for the days of starting my career, buying Gallo by the gallon because I had to (as opposed to because I want to, which sometimes I still do), still feeling like a kid in relation to my parents, etc. I’m so, SO glad to be beyond those struggling, insecure years — not that I’m never struggling or insecure now, but it’s momentary when it happens, and I have the perspective and experience to deal with it all. I can honestly say that the only thing I miss about my 20s is the quicker recovery time from hangovers.

*Not her real name. It’s a nick I just made up, based on where she’s from and who she looks like.

Ooooh, BURN!

This is not a politics blog -- I mean, I'm very political in a direction I think is apparent from my asides and whatnot here and there, but Damn Kids is basically about drinking, For Better or For Worse, and discussing such important matters as when, exactly, A.J. "Fuckup McMurderbait" Soprano is gonna get whacked and precisely how incredibly satisfying that is going to be -- but I gotta make sure y'all see this:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, responding to Dick Cheney's accusation that he's changed his position several times on funding for the war in Iraq: "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating."

In your FACE, Dick!

Molokaaaaaaaaaiiiii!

Normally I’d be telling you this around September, but logistical demands have meant that Mr. Gleemonex and I will be taking our big vacation in May this year. My requirements are simple: sun, warm temps, beach. We are huge fans of Hawaii, having been there five times so far (Kauai twice, and Maui, the Big Island, and Oahu once each) and seriously considering moving there, so this time we thought we’d do Molokai since we haven’t tried it yet. But it wasn’t panning out — bad flight times, mega-expensive flights, nothing in the way of hotel choice (like, Expedia couldn’t book it at all, when I tried them for reference purposes).

Next choice: Maui. UNACCEPTABLE flights (like, either $900 each for a non-stop, or $700 each for one that stopped in Honolulu, with an EIGHT-HOUR layover, and arrived back in SFO at 5:50 a.m.). Plus the hotels were fucking ridiculous — the place we stayed in a few years ago, a nice but not spectacular joint on Kaanapali beach, is running over $400 a night these days. Bitch, it didn’t cost that much back then, and I ain’t payin that now. Even the Kaanapali Beach Hotel, a locally-owed, un-schwank place, was $205/night. So … no.

I priced all the other islands — Kauai, our first love; the Big Island, where we ate the best of anywhere we’ve traveled (with the possible exception of Paris); Oahu, where we’d avoid Honolulu entirely in favor of the north and east shores; Lanai, impossible unless you’re Bill Motherhumping Gates. No dice. So I broadened the search: Los Cabos. Puerto Rico. San Diego. Turks & Caicos. Miami. South Padre. Punta Cana. Florida Keys. The entire goddamn Caribbean. I was about to give up. Until I went back to the Molokai idea.

Epiphany: condos! We’d stayed in one our second visit to Kauai, and that worked out fine. And lo — here’s one, in the best area of the west side, for a magical $75 a night. YAY INTERNETS! We take that, we pay the extortionist price for the flight (oddly, less than the last time I looked), and we’re good to go!

So in less than three weeks, we will be on our way to the Most Hawaiian Isle, a place that’s 38 miles long, 10 miles wide, and holds fewer than 7,000 permanent residents. Even among northern Californians, who go to Hawaii like Texans go to Padre or SoCallies to Vegas, Mr. Gleemonex and I together know exactly one person who’s ever been there. Ain’t a stoplight on the whole island, no fast food, no K-Marts … it is gonna be SO AWESOME.

Little Big League

Oh man, Chase Wright, ya poor bastard — you got banged up out there, and I hated to see it happen, but you were doing all right until then — shit, you held your own for awhile, at least as good as Mister “I Don’t Speak To You Until You Pay Me Fifty Million Dollars” on the other side. And as my girl Sars says to the people ragging on your ass,

Let's have Cashman call you up before you're old enough to drink, send you to Fenway, and see how you do against the Boston line-up. It's not like we expected him to throw a no-no, so bring it down a notch.

Take a sauna, get someone to buy you a beer, shake it off, kid. You’re gonna do OK.

Plus, in re: the Man, the Myth, the Legend, Dice K: Didn’t impress me all that much. Can’t throw inside, didn’t show a lot of power or bring much mystery or craft — I think guys are gonna have his number pretty quickly, and then start lighting him up on a regular basis. I just hope I'm watching when it happens.

GOT A PLS. NTHNG SPCL, BSMNT W/CAGE, LTS OF SKNCARE PRDCTS, LNDLRD WRKS ALOT ON TAILORING PRJCT

Lookit Lynn, wouldja? All hip to the text-messaging the kids R so N2.

God, it’s like when your 8th-grade Civics teacher tries to rap, or something. Thoroughly humiliating for everyone involved.

Headline credit goes to the inimitable Aquarius, poster on Salon's Table Talk, with her permission.

Are you in the house alone?

This week, your good buddy Gleemonex has been by her lonesome in the windswept house at the edge of the continent while Mr. Gleemonex occupies his own suite at the Venetian in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada [pause while you, and I, consider the raging unfairness of THAT], all expenses paid by his employer because he’s there for “work,” aka a bigass convention.

As a consequence of having read too much Stephen King and In Cold Blood and John Motherfucking Douglas and STILL being unable to stop myself from that terrible habit, I’ve never been a good sleeper when home alone, so I’ve rented a few flix to take my mind off the moment at the end of the evening when I have to barricade all the doors and windows (pyramids of bottles & cans, dining room chairs, pile of magazines spread out for like fifteen feet in the living room, the better to trip a home invader with — it’s really, seriously pathetic) and go to bed, lights a-blazin' and ears alert for sounds of approaching boogeymen, be they natural, supernatural, or meth-addicted. Anyhoo.

Brokeback Mountain: Meh. It’s about an hour too long, and some parts (a scene featuring shirtless frolicking of the sort that makes me suspect the dialogue was written as: “tee hee!” comes to mind) were frankly hilarious (I assume unintentionally). Whatevs.

Saved!: LOVE. THIS. MOVIE. This was a re-watch, and I liked it even better the second time. Would be a strange and fun pairing with, say, Jesus Camp (a horror film unlike any Mr. King ever devised, I must say).

The Devil Wears Prada: Blecccch. Watched it for Meryl Streep, who did rock a bitch. Movie was a hyooge improvement upon the “novel,” which blew large steamy goat chunks, but — well, you can see how that’s not much of an improvement. Grenier, you sure phoned this’n in, didn’t ya?

Speak: Caught part of this once on TV, always wanted to see how it ended. Pretty good stuff, if about some downer subject matter.

Mona Lisa Smile: Jesus H. Christ in a panty girdle, why did I do this? Two words: Set design. Nice clothes and whatnot. But holy shit, what a piece of smeg. Dunno what was worse, the historical inaccuracies or the performances. Or maybe the story itself. Ugh.

The Consoler-in-Chief

Missing the point entirely, yet again:

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," [White House Spokesperson Dana] Perino said … . "Certainly, bringing a gun into a school domitory and shooting ... is against the law and something someone should be held accountable for."

PS: Re: the title of this post: Someone on CNN actually said this, apparently unironically. Just when I think I've mastered my gag reflex ...

Soon to follow: the Summer of George

Spring in San Francisco is an odd beast. We don’t really have a winter — just slightly lower average temperatures, more rain (or, rather, “rain”), and wind — and because it’s sunny all the time, you barely notice that the trees are bare and there aren’t many flowers. But then one sunny, honestly if briefly warm April midday, you notice — hey! All the trees are loaded with bright green leaves! And blossoms! And it’s real sunlight, not that weird glittery slanted sunlight! I’ll be damned!

And so because your eyes are suddenly adjusted, you start noticing other things — such as the brave, cheery new coffee shack having its grand opening in this forlorn, unsexy street-level corner of the Bechtel building, in a space formerly occupied by some grim no-name 7-11 ripoff that sorta looked like the undeniably grim Bechtel’s very own version of Place To Get Caffeinated Stimulant Product Without Leaving Building. Styrofoam Cups, Non-Dairy Creamer Only.

It was a pleasure to burn.

Pretty much the best gift anyone can give me ever is a bookstore gift card. It’s not impersonal — to me, it says, “I know you very well, and I know that shopping for books is your favorite non-travel-or-booze-related activity in life other than reading books — go, friend Gleemonex, and do that which you most love!”

So, my mom gave me $50 on Amazon for my birthday in January. I got so many books for my bday and xmas that only now do I need a fresh armload — and I just got my order! Wanna see?

The Children of Men: Never have read PD James before (thought she was a he, in fact). I like shit about dystopian futures, and species-wide infertility intrigues me in a strange way, so here we go.

The Player: Great movie, have heard it’s a great book. We shall see …

Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes: OK, so I’m a little miffed that they didn’t ask me for contributions to this — I wrote several very awesome papers on just this theme in college (I’m particularly proud of the one about “Nowhere Teens,” referencing Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and the far lesser light Some Kind of Wonderful, for the senior seminar “Suburbia and its Cultures”), and have long cultivated a theory that the Golden Age of Teen Movies began with Fast Times (1982), ended with Dazed & Confused (1993), and reached its zenith in the one-two-three punch of Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller, and The Breakfast Club). But still, fun reading for during my commute.

JPod: a Novel: Dougie Coupland, frankly, has me by the short hairs. Generation X and Microserfs are two of my favorite books ever. I’ve skipped a few — Girlfriend in a Coma could not sustain the rabid interest generated in me by its excellent title — but the ones I love, I really really love. Hoping this one is one of those.

How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time: (pre-ordered, comes out later this month) Because it really did change my life, this magazine, and I want to hear other people talk about how fucking awesome and different and kickass it was.

The Sociopath-in-Chief

Article on the Internets today: Bush renews call for 'culture of life'

Oh yeah? Tell you what, fucktard: Why don’t you stop executing retarded people, slaughtering brown civilians by the thousands for living on top of our oil, feeding American soldiers into the fucking wood chipper, and letting entire American cities get wiped out while you laff it up on vacation, and then maybe you and me can talk about your so-called “culture of life,” you sick murderous asshole.

For the love of God, Montresor!

In all this telegraphed-from-three-years-ago musical-houses shuffle, I love that nobody thinks of ol' what's-her-name, the youngest one -- you know -- the high school kid, the oops baby, the not-Liz ... ahh, April, that's right! Knew I'd remember. Guess she's gonna be sleeping in the garage, next to boxes of choo-choos in various states of disrepair from vigorous use that are awaiting John's tender ministrations.

And I got a question: Where's LIZ'S practically free house? Are free houses reserved solely for the righteous procreators of the family? Must the swingin single girl make do with a room in some elderly lecher's attic near the school, sharing washer and dryer space with butt-sprung boxers, nylon nightgowns and sans-a-belt slacks? I guess so, if the eventual aim is to push the aforementioned swingin single girl into the arms (and creepy basement "safe room") of her dumpy pornstachioed stalkerazzi ex.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84. Feels to me a lot like losing Hunter S. Thompson, though I confess I read more, and understood more, of HST than of Vonnegut. Anybody who reads this blog would love his last book, a collection of essays called A Man Without a Country. There's something comforting about the guy, so disheartened by the way humans behave toward one another, yet always finding something redeemable, something good, some way to live among it all.

From today's sfgate:

To Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," summed up his philosophy:

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "

You can feeel your heart slowin down

Courtesy of the marvelous growabrain, a link to the best thing ever: Deep-Fried Butter Balls. For reals. Listen to me here, Internets:

Deep
fried
balls
of butter.

It’s a heart attack on a plate, a quadruple bypass waiting to happen. And it also sounds FUCKING DELICIOUS. Blame it on my Faulty Upbringing, if you want, but I’m game for pretty much anything deep-fried (remember on King of the Hill, when Dale and Boomhauer got a huge dang ol’ deep-fryer, and set about deep-frying anything that wasn’t nailed down, up to and including a whole, unopened can of beer? It’s kind of like that, with me). In my day-to-day life, I don’t eat a lot of the deep-fried, and that is one of the reasons I do not weigh four hundred pounds, but I probably could if I wanted (I am of hearty country stock, and I conclude from recent cholesterol and blood-pressure numbers that although someday, SOMETHING is going to take me to the big Smiths concert in the sky, it won’t be the butter or the salt, yo).

Indeed.

"There's no telling what new harm Bush might do if he ever gets back up off the mat. You have to keep your knee on his windpipe until the danger is past."
-- Garry Trudeau

Oh, yes, "baby fish mouth" is sweeping the nation.

OK, dammit, one of my fave blogs, Liberally Lean From the Land of Dairy Queen, posted this quiz a couple days ago, and I bit. I stripped out a bunch of the annoying/boring questions, though (e.g. “What is your favorite genre of movie?” ugh.).

Reader bonus: See if you can tell which of these answers owe their existence to the partaking of “herbal refreshment” during and for a few years after college.

1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times.
Incomplete list (you know I have my habits): Sixteen Candles, A Christmas Story, Major League, Footloose, Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back, Dazed & Confused, When Harry Met Sally, The Hudsucker Proxy, Romeo + Juliet, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Big Lebowski, Scrooged, Raiders of the Lost Ark, A Hard Day’s Night, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, WarGames, Ghostbusters, Labyrinth, The Karate Kid, Heathers.

2. Name a movie that you've seen multiple times in the theater.
All-time record: Major League, six times. I was, of course, 15 and a baseball fanatic; unfortunately, this movie gave rise to a rather serious Charlie Sheen thing, which caused multiple viewings of the major and minor works of the Charlie Sheen oeuvre, most regrettably The Wraith. However, The Wraith did yield one of the BEST MOVIE QUOTES OF ALL TIME: Sayeth the bad guy, “What you’ve GOT is an ass-full of trouble!” You know, actually, I’ve come around full circle on this one, just in composing this answer — you should rent this flick. Gooooood times.

11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what?
Superman II. Mom in the car, me and sis sprawled on the hood of the giant ‘70s Buick (not Maurice, this sumbitch would’ve eaten three of the Mo for breakfast), with pillows and blankets, in our pajamas.

13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven't yet gotten around to it.
Pretty much the middle 40 or so of my 90-item Netflix queue. It’s a sad and unchanging state of affairs, kind of like my unholy obsession with For Better or For Worse.

14. Ever walked out of a movie?
Reservoir Dogs. Could not handle the torture scenes — just sickening and depressing beyond all measure.

16. Popcorn?
Always, always. Even during Schindler’s List. I choose movie theaters by whether they have good corn or bogus corn. Real butter is a plus. Freshness is key. Too many unpopped kernels will render a theater dead to me.

17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting)?
Rarely — I hate the kids at the Thug Plaza 20, the Gleemonex “local.” Usually we go with groups of drunken friends to shit like Snakes on a Plane, or by ourselves to see stuff that you really should see on the big screen.

18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater?
Zodiac. Pretty fucking intense on the big screen, yo. Had to cover the eyes & plug the ears during certain early scenes.

20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
The Dark Crystal, maybe — I’m positive I went to a movie theater before I was 8, but I’m not coming up with any other titles.

21. What movie made you cry in the theater?
Fahrenheit 9/11

22. What movie(s) do you wish you had never seen?
Wild at Heart, House of 1,000 Corpses

Coming up: More TELEVISION. But first: PRODUCTS!

KaBlam! fans will get that one …

OK, now that I’m back from a fantastic weekend of sun, booze, food and rocking in the Santa Cruz mountains, home of very dear friends and future home of the Gleemonex family, I have time to talk about a subject near and dear to ye olde Gleemonex: television.

God, do I watch a lot of tee-vee. But anyway.

NOTE: A dedicated spoiler virgin, I will post no spoilers, and I beg you neither to spoil directly nor reference spoilage in any comment you may leave — and please be sensitive to shows still on the air that latecomers may still be catching up to on DVD or TiVo marathons.

Entourage: Rawk. I love this fuckin show. Such a mess, such a horrible way to live, and so well-written and entertaining. Welcome back, boys!

Big Love: I hear the second season starts on June 17 — yaaay! I can’t remember why I started watching this, especially since I was so put off by the premise and was sure it was going to be played for wacky laffs, but after the first ep (“hmm. That was interesting. Let’s grab the next one, too.”), I gradually got sucked in, and now I am its bitch. Its fourth wife, if you will. ugh.

Sopranos: Holy SCHNIKES. The season premiere last night was just suffused with dread and angst — I lost track of how many times I said to the TV and Mr. Gleemonex, “THAT’S not gonna turn out well.” And then, whether something Bad happened or not, the feeling that something or many things Bad was/were about to happen, never left me. The camera work alone was a distinct character unto itself. Brilliant. Can’t wait to see where this is all going.

Friday Night Lights: Season finale this week. Oh god, how am I going to last till fall? There was a spoileriffic reveal of a traditionally show-killing revelation in the previews, and I gotta say, that is giving me serious angst over where this amazingly awesome drama is going — but I have faith in these writers. Serenity now!

Twin Peaks: Finally, FINALLY they’re releasing the 2nd season on DVD. As reviewer Dennis Lim said, it’s received wisdom that the second season was a prolonged free-fall, but that’s not really the truth. Peaks lost its way a bit, but there was a lot left to tell in the final episodes, especially the Lynch-directed ones: “Notably oblivious to the rules of prime time, they are characterized by longer scenes, stranger moods, more intense emotions — nowhere more apparent than in the chilling cliffhanger finale.” These things I must have. Cannot abide not having them in my pie-sticky, coffee-stained hands now that I know they’re out there. [Note to CK: Wherever you are, I’ll be thinking of you at every detectable commercial break, remembering how we used to call each other during each one and screeeeeam about whatever just happened. Thems was good times, my friend.]

Mister April

I am on record, many times over, with my hatred for the man, the myth, the sucktacular legend Alex “Choke Specialist 1st Class” Rodriguez, aka Suck-Rod, aka A-Hole. I hated him from way back when he was on the Mariners, showboating and grandstanding in an OK team in a cruddy division, getting lauded for being the Greatest Player Ever in the History of Organized Sport; I hated him when the Rangers fell for his snowjob and paid the most ridiculous salary ever; I’ve hated him more with every passing day that he has been a Yankee, fucking up the team’s chemistry, sucking up money, booting play after play after motherscratching play when it counts most — I never wanted him, I hate that we have him, and I’d gladly kill him with my own bare hands to keep him from playing another day in my beloved pinstripes.

So it is with mixed feelings that I see his performance so far this season. He’s homering like they’re gonna outlaw it tomorrow, which, yay for him and I don’t mind the Ws adding up. But I also hate hate hate it, because soon enough — mark my words — he’ll go so cold he’ll reverse global warming all by himself, and this is likely to happen DURING THE PLAYOFFS. Like always. Jesus H.

Potpourri Friday

Random thoughts that didn’t quite gel into whole posts this week:

Potent Potables
If you read this blog, you are likely to enjoy a wee cocktail or four, and to know people who also indulge. So you should buy this book about booze, by my friend Ian Lendler, because it is hilarious, full of fascinating historical tidbits, and can be read straight through or in the open-to-a-random-page method — I promise you it is really that fucking good. You should probably buy three or eight, so you’ll have extras to give as gifts to all your alkie friends.

Beatlemania
If you have the opportunity to see the Fab Faux live, or just to hear them (they were on Stern a couple of weeks ago), you absolutely owe it to yourself to do that. It’s a bunch of guys from the Conan and Letterman bands & some friends of theirs, who play the later Beatles oeuvre live — the way the Beatles never did, because they stopped touring in 1966. The Faux do it note- and sound-perfect (there’s a guy whose job is to say “Numbah … nine. Numbah … nine.” when they play Revolution 9, for example), often going through an entire album start to finish. It is fucking fantastic. PS: Ignore the 1997 website design; they’re musicians, not web designers.

TV Trivia
Friday Night Lights is the best show on television, and a heavyweight contender for best TV show in the history of ever. If you’re not watching because you don’t like football, pull your head out of your ass, wipe the shit from your eyes, and start watching this fucking thing.

Musical Maestros
Why the fuck are Sloan and Fountains of Wayne playing on the same goddamn night in San Francisco? Don’t you happy assholes know YOU SHARE THE SAME AUDIENCE? Slooooo-oooan! Slooooo-oooan!

Some people call me Maurice

Apropos of the high-school related thoughts caused by April’s 16th bday, I got to thinking about the one major perk of turning 16 that is actually true: getting your driver’s license. (Well, at least, it was in Texass back in my day [1990], if you’d had driver’s ed that year).

I was never, how you say, a good driver. I hit the fucking pole in the parallel-parking portion of the driving test, which they graciously overlooked. To ALL Y’ALL’S PERIL! And for the test, I was in my great-grandmother’s Bonneville, the only car in my family’s fleet that was both A) insured, inspected and up to code, and B) automatic.

But so I passed, and they gave me the license. What, then, could I drive? Why, the 1980 Buick Skylark that my cousin GAVE to my brother, who then SOLD it to me. This vehicle was SEXXXAY. I tell you whut. It was of a lemony hue, or rather, a once-lemony hue now faded to sort of a sickly yellowish cast. It was square, like when a kid draws a car, know what I mean? No aerodynamic stylings, folks — just utility. It had bench seats, upholstered in a charming tan-and-off-whitish check pattern, and ceiling upholstery that I kept in place with artful thumbtack designs. I named it Maurice on first sight.

Who cared, though — it RAN! It worked! It functioned! And but waaait … oh shit, it was manual. Stick motherfuckin shift, fools. I almost cried when I found that out. I could barely operate the goddamned Bonnie! Many awesome times ensued, once my mom & brother taught me how not to kill people in it (dad tried once and we got in the biggest fight of our lives to that date) — the friends I toted around, the laps we all cruised, the sneak runs to Denton that I did NOT have permission for, the taillight of some kid’s Probe that I smashed in the school parking lot and then just kind of quietly drove away from, the off-campus lunchtime derby (200 kids all racing for the same 3 restaurants), the many many tickets I got (ranging from inspection sticker wrongdoing to driving 61 in a 60), the fabulous unintentional peelouts (one of which punctuated the most killer breakup line I ever uttered) … goddamn, that Buick was good to me. Miss ya, Maurice — you was good times, broseph. Good times.

PS: This vehicle was insured by the "Sunshine Insurance Agency," otherwise known as a piece of paper my dad conned some lady into printing out for him. Oi. And mark my word: I was totally prepared to sell my dad down the river if I ever got busted for that. Cops in Texass do not fuck around when it comes to insurance.

Bet you could see THAT on the dradis.

Internets, I have my addictions, and one of them is Battlestar Galactica (how I'm gonna make it till the next season starts, in two-thousand-fucking-eight, I honestly cannot tell you). And there's this person on this show, a Viper pilot whose callsign is Helo, who has like a tractor-beam quality about him -- he draws the eye, he holds the eye, he makes a lady think unclean thoughts, oh yes he does. I couldn't find a usable picture that did him justice, but anyway it's better to see him in motion, ya dig?

And so I'm obviously not the only one ... I just found an offhand reference to this guy as a "nine-foot-tall slampiece." I laaaaaaaaaaaaaughed and laughed when I read that in the MBTV recap of the season finale ep, cause -- yeah. Exactly.

Caprica [Six] protests that it shouldn't be possible. Cylon psychology is based on projection, not shared tripped-out freak-ins. Athena's like, "I'm a commissioned officer in the Colonial Fleet married to a nine-foot-tall slampiece from Caprica, large as life and twice as natural, with whom I have a preposterous child. Six impossible things before breakfast, lady."

What you need is 4 inches of bod, and a great birthday.

Apparently, the Slut-o-Matic 5000 has been turned up to 11, because while mere days ago, young April was a doughy-butted LL Bean Outlet type (future music major at a small weird college, probably eventually getting laid most unsatisfactorily by her bearded douchebag of a Music Theory TA), now that she’s turned sixteen, artistic genius and hip, with-it lady Lynn Johnston is drawing her as The Next Pussycat Doll. I mean, kapow! the day after the poor girl’s birthday, she's all hott and hairsprayed and rolling her uniform skirt up to her biscuit, the way she used to judge Becky (aka “Roadside”) for doing. Whether this is the effect of the drunken teen 2nd- and possibly 3rd-base rollaround with Gerald that she totally got away with last weekend, or if LJ just thinks this is really what happens to girls on That Most Magical of Birthdays, is anyone’s guess. Me, I just looked like the same spiral-permed, wannabe-hippie, Methodist Youth Fellowshipping overachiever I was the day before …
But I see that the kids at skewl are still sharing the 50s with our Lynn, because Gerald has spread the word about his “score” and there’s all sorts of slackjawed leering going on. Will April go completely roadside now that her innocence is gone? Or will she toss the makeup, burn the slutwear, re-affix the sloppy ponytail, and crawl back, humbled, to accept her density? I mean … her destiny.

Well, that and Emily Fucking Dickinson

The two things I hate most in the world:

1) Magic.
Including but not limited to: pulling quarters out of ears, sawing people in half, those fucking rings that look interconnected but magically aren’t, card tricks, RPGs that involve wizards/warlocks et. al. (all RPGs, while I’m on the subject), magic performed by children, pulling shit out of hats/bags/sleeves, conjuring, sorcery, chemistry and physics.
Notable exceptions: time travel, the David Bowie/Jennifer Connelly classic Labyrinth, all things Harry Potter.

2) Great apes.
Including but not limited to: gorillas, orangutans, Nascar fans, chimpanzees, bonobos, Koko, Clyde, Australopithicenes, those damn dirty apes that so bedeviled Chaz Heston.
Notable exceptions: the monkeys in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Prometheus and Bob.

Tell you what, we'll skip the turn-down service ...

Why is everyone who runs a bed & breakfast crazy with a capital K?

Mr. Gleemonex and I just came back from a weekend away, celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary, and on this trip, as on all the others, we used a B&B gift certificate given to me by my in-laws as a birthday present (excellent gift, btw!). So that’s really the only reason we stay in B&Bs — otherwise we’d probably just hit the hotels. I mean, we don’t go places to make new friends — breakfasts where you have to share a table with Chatty McOldguy and his wife Nancy The Unsatisfied Know-It-All are pure torture to the Gleemonexes. We are, incidentally, routinely the youngest guests in the joint by at least 15, and more like 25, years. (Well, except for this one TOTALLY AWESOME couple from Bakersfield at the B&B in Cambria when we went to see Hearst Castle — they were early 20s, had two kids, and dominated the afternoon wine-n-cheese hour with stupendous tales, like how they met in a bar and she told him she wanted to marry the next guy she banged, and how he had to climb in the bathroom window to help her escape her roommate when she was moving in with him, and how she’s totally going to get a job soon … specifically, opening an art gallery with a girlfriend, which drew Hubby’s notable lack of enthusiasm since it seemed that to him, “job” meant something where you get paid — those people ruled. It was the only time we’ve stuck around for the conversation, instead of grabbing handfuls of the food, filling our glasses to the brim, and retreating to our room).

But here’s the thing: Some of the B&Bs have been really nice, a couple have been kinda crappy, some have excellent cookies for the taking and provide good free wine, while others think towels are enough of an amenity for the likes of you — but all of them, ALL of them have been run by nutjobs. They gotta know your business, they tell you their life stories, they give you breathlessly excited tours of the (rather ordinary) grounds, the whole place smells like cat pee and they don’t notice, they yell at the whole lot of you at breakfast when you’re chatting and don’t pay enough attention to their presentation of the entrée — and/or they just give you the fantods with their weird vibe. The craziest of all was this freakjob in Sonora — whose husband, a French person, baked daily the most divine pastries I have eaten this side of Paris — who told all of the guests at the table one morning about how she’d had a psychotic break while in France, where they told her she was too crazy to work at whatever job she had, and fired her! (Ha haaaaa! Craaazy laughter! But she’s TOTALLY OK NOW! Really!) Internets, this was a lady whom we had seeerious worries about — like murdered-in-the-night, oh-god-she-has-a-KEY-to-our-ROOM type worries.

So much crazy in the world, and so much of it concentrated in the bed and breakfast establishments of Northern California.

Apropos of nothing, a bonus nugget: Words spoken grimly but matter-of-factly by Mr. Gleemonex as I flipped through stations on Sirius satellite radio somewhere along the coast on Hwy. 1: “If the Pretenders were never played on the radio again, that would be OK with me.”