"Mad, bad and dangerous to know. That was him and that's me."

Two guys, twins, playing the 90210 theme on a single acoustic guitar -- the single best minute and thirty-six seconds of my day. Tears of helpless laughter, people.

And I think the guy on the left looks like Dave Grohl's love child, which I don't mind one bit, eh wot.

[The quote is from Dylan McKay, Season 1, btw.]

Half a dozen awesome: Things about the mall when I was 13

Internets, I’ve never been a major shopper or mall person really, at least not in my heart of hearts. But like pretty much everyone, I had a Mall Phase back when I was around 12 or 13 — you ever see those roving packs of overly-made-up preteens blocking your way into the frickin Gap to get a frickin sweater for your sister’s boyfriend for xmas? I was in one of those, on many occasions back in the day. Here’s what was great about those times:

1) Total freedom to roam. We had no cars, no licenses, couldn’t go anywhere or do anything — but if somebody’s mom dropped us off at the mall, we were loosed in the wide world for HOURS. It was like I imagine being allowed downtown for the day in the fifties was — total safety, total access, pretensions to adulthood unfettered.
2) Orange Julius.
3) Claire’s. The number of awful, cheap jewelry items we bought there — necklaces that left a green strip around your neck, earrings that would cause your earholes to crust over, bracelets that broke within hours — was truly amazing.
4) Boys. We never spoke to any of them, of course, but we could set upon a group of them and stalk them from store to store, food court to pretzel shack, all goddamn day if we wanted. And we did.
5) Breakin the law! Any of y’all that never, ever shoplifted anything — not the cheapest pair of earrings from Claire’s, not the stupidest novelty penis pencil from Spencer’s — raise your hands. […] Yeah, I don’t see any hands, y’all. Tsk tsk.
6) The opportunity to try on roles like … well, cheap bracelets from Claire’s, not to belabor a point. You and whoever you had slept over with would do each other’s hair, trade clothes, and meet up with your friends for the trip to the mall (which in our case was at least 30 miles away in a different town where nobody knows you). New eyeshadow, a side ponytail, the other girl’s scrunchies and her older sister’s fuchsia tank top = a whole new you!

Boom! I f****d your boyfriend!

And of course by "the other side," we know she means: ROADSIDE.

Bamp-chicka-bamp bamp, chicka WOCKA chicka ...

[The post title refers to a rather terrible semi-rap song from back in like 1991, which I owned on cassingle and played in regular rotation with other woman-scorned ditties after I got dumped by my HS boyfriend and he started dating a mutual friend. For the record, I never f****d anybody back then, yo.]

Do the chickens have large talons?

Internets, Gleemonex’s favorite annual television event is on today and tomorrow. I’m talking, of course, of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, broadcasting live (no kidding, on actual TV channels) from our nation’s capital.

Now, I always do develop a few favorites among the kids, but I’m gonna be stone cold rooting for my homeboy, #247, Samir Patel, representing the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, now in his fifth year at the national Bee and a favorite to win — and I hate to spoil it for any of y’all TiVo-ing it (because I know you are legion — LEGION!), but it does look like homeslice made it through today. GIVE ‘EM HELL, PATEL!

The thing is, watching the bee is pure AGONY for me — I was there once, you see. And while it's kind of fun to spell along, test yourself to see if you still got it, it's impossible not to feel the pain — those poor kids, man.

So -- the year was 1988, back when it was still the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee. I was 14, in 8th grade (and my last year of eligibility), when I finally made it to the nationals after two years of crapping out at the regional level (“pennigrade,” 1986, never heard of it; a word I knew but spelled too fast and left a letter out of, 1987). I represented the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, thus my allegiance to my young Indian homie — bro’s before ho’s, Samir old buddy.

And this was way before the NSB had any kind of cool at all. I mean, for reals — it’s still as incredibly nerdy as it always was, but today there are all these books and movies and documentaries and whatnot, and people train and study for it in earnest from like, age five, and it’s on frickin ESPN and ABC, and the winner gets $35,000 and a bunch of other prizes and gets to go on goddamned Letterman and shit — in my day, we were all just a passel of book-readin’ nerdlets who sorta stumbled into the gig, and the top prize was $1,500 and a set of Encyclopedia Britannica (really).

So the pressure is on for these poor kids, and I’m telling you, even back in the Jurassic when I was doin’ the bee, the atmosphere was fucking KILLER. I cannot describe the tension of being up on that stage, a cardboard number slung around your neck, dressed in your Sunday best, out of your mind with stomach-churning, bug-eyed fear (fear which, because you are about 13 or 14, you must conceal from your peers if it is the last thing you do on earth). You’ve spent several days touring DC on the newspaper’s dime, getting to know your fellow spellers, some of whom will be friends for life (hi, Scott Isaacs, 1989 champ! Hey there, Aparajita Nandi! How y’all?), and now you’re sitting on stage, beaming laser beams of failure at their backs as hard as you can, because the only way you can win is if they fuck up. And you know damn well they’re doing it to you, too. (“Schadenfreude” really is everyone’s favorite word at the bee.) The audience is composed entirely of parents and loved ones — it’s not a public event — and the weight of that collective parental angst is absolutely suffocating.

So then it’s your turn, after like TEN YEARS of watching everyone else go through it, and you’re up there in front of the mic, and Jacques Bailly gives you your word and you take a second to process — do you know it, or don’t you? If you do, you go ahead and ask to hear it again, maybe a definition or a sentence, just to be sure. Nothing worse than a verbal typo, misspelling a word you know. Close your eyes, see it in your head. And you spell the motherfucker. Slowly.

If you don’t, you stand there a second, heart dropping into your shoes, and ask for it again. You ask the other things you’re allowed to ask: definition (might help), word origin (can help if you read a lot or know anything of other languages), alternate pronunciations (no help), use it in a sentence (almost never any help at all). You say it, eyes locked to Bailly’s face, or to Mary’s (she seems kind, doesn’t she?), to be sure you’re hearing them right. Finally, you just have to take your best guess. Close your eyes, see it in your head. Spell the motherfucker. Slowly.

There may be a time in a kid’s life where 1.5 seconds seems longer than this particular 1.5 seconds, the eternal 1.5 seconds while the judges wait to be sure you’re done with the last letter you’re going to say, but I’ll be damned if I know what it would be. There’s absolute stillness and then — either nods and clapping, or a terrible, dreadful yet objectively innocuous “ding” from that fucking bell. And there may be a longer walk than the walk off the stage after that ding, but I’ll be damned if I know what that would be, either.

Good luck and godspeed, kids. Do your best, try not to make it your whole life, and remember to put it on your resume henceforward. It’ll always get you noticed, and you’ll always have this: You heard the ding, and you lived to tell about it. On your blog. Nineteen years later. Which is not sad, at all.

Love,
Gleemonex
Speller #87
Placed 99th of 200, mowed down by the word “fanchonette” in the 5th round (that round was like the Battle of the Somme, yo)

Beats all you ever saw / been in trouble with the law / since the day they was born

So hey, another benefit of not drinking:

3). Fearlessly cruising past the biggest DUI checkpoint operation you've ever seen in your life (including in Texass), after a three-day weekend of boozetastic celebration capped off by a visit to your favorite restaurant y cantina for dinner.

Seriously, there were at least 20 cop cars, plus some riot vans and one of those huge Van-Halen-tour-bus things for gathering up the drunks (so they don't have to run every caught bastard into the station separately).

And of course, I mean "fearlessly" as in, if they stop me, I might get a ticket for some of my weak-ass driving because I am the Worst Driver Ever, which weak-ass driving is made worse by my lifelong fear of cops (who, where I grew up and spent my formative driving years, are in actual fact Out To Get You*), but at least I'm foolproof for the ol' DUI.

*Partial list of tickets young Gleemonex received in or around Cowburg, Texass, between the ages of 16 and 20, all of which resulted from and were the cause of individual stops:
--expired registration sticker (a 3"x1" item on your rear license plate)
--doing 61 in a 60
--no proof of insurance ($300, highest charge except the one for "gave chase")
--passenger not wearing seatbelt
--doing 57 in a 50
--burned-out signal light (my MOM'S car)
--expired inspection sticker (by one month)

Image from Toothpaste for Dinner, a kickass daily webcomic that you should read every day.

Wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy

Internets, last night I had a half glass of wine. A Ravenswood cab sauv, sort of the house red at Casa Gleemonex (the Schlumberger is the Good Shit, but we’re saving that till I can drink more than 2 oz. a month). It was with a big meal (salad, lasagna, garlic bread) that I made for Mr. Gleemonex’s birthday, and by the way, Mr. Gleemonex wants it noted that he’s not in approvance of me consuming any alcohol at all really until after Kid Gleemonex is done borned. And I get that, I really do. For the most part, I’m with him on the subject.

But anyway — my point is, I just wanted to for one goddamn minute feel like a fucking grownup. That’s the problem with this whole not-drinking thing (well, one of the problems, anyway) — the infantilization (how ironic). I feel like I’m back in the Methodist Youth Fellowship, drinkin’ soda at the pizza party and talking about the awesome ministry events we’ve got coming up.

Now, to clarify, it’s not that Adults Must Drink to Be Considered Adults, and I’ve had plenty of meals and social situations in my adulthood that don’t involve drinking — but I don’t have the choice now, and that’s what really rankles. It’s like I’m perpetually at the kids’ table, you know?

So that half-glass last night was heavenly. I didn’t even want more — it was like, OK, I tasted it and it was good, and that’s all I needed. Next month: Another half-glass! Watch out, F. Scott, I’m right on your heels, you sodden old boozehound.

Someone left the cake out in the rain

Jesus H. Of all the ... goddammit, a solid ten days or whatever of the Incredibly Depressing Realm of Stroke Rehabilitation Therapy and the Crushing Inevitability of Elder Care That Lies In Wait For All of Us One Way or Another, and we come back to a world in which, quoth the immortal Sarah B, "a tree fell on John and Elly's dreams."

What the damn hell is this all about, and who CARES? I mean, Elly's bugging the fuck out like it's 9/11 all over again, John's excited to use manly power tools with his son (Saint Michael, who, somewhat improbably, owns a chainsaw), and April's surrendered to magical thinking (wherein you're so self-centered that you think you actually cause events with your own thoughts). Holy moly. More wacky plot contrivances than Weekend at Bernie's and any four unconvincing and tiresome Drew Barrymore romcoms combined.

Slow down, you on Molokai

Back from the island, y’all …

I tell you what, if you want to drop out of life, Molokai is the place to go. Every single day, we woke up with the birds (literally — TONS of birds and other wildlife on this island), ate breakfast (often these amazing pastries from Kanemitsu bakery) on the lanai (ocean view), greased up with SPF 50, loaded up a cooler with sandwiches and cold beverages, and hit a beach (at which we were almost always the only people there). With the chairs and beach umbrella provided by the condo, we were good for many hours. We came back to the place around 3:00, showered, and headed out for food.

Then we’d hang out on the couch for awhile, flipping among the five (5) channels on the TV and/or sitting on the lanai listening to our neighbor, a chatty older Brit who’d “been in Her Majesty’s Service for thirty-three years” (i.e. was in the Army) and is now “raking it in” as a consultant all over the world for the World Bank (Burkina Faso came up more than once) party like a frat boy with the other permanent or mostly-permanent residents of the complex (this was excellent theatre, by the way — they were on the other side of the lanai wall, obviously, so we’d sit there silently boggling at the stupid and awesome and awesome-stupid things they’d all say, and marveling at the booze they could put away). And then we’d go to bed around 9:00, to the cheery sounds made by the geckos scrambling here and there on the ceiling & walls.

We never wore shoes (flip-flops only, and not even those in our place), there was no air-conditioning (just the breezes), it was low 80s every day, and the action highlight of the week was this huge surfski race from Molokai to Oahu (37.2 miles!) that launched from our beach on Sunday. Oh, there was a hula festival — Molokai is the birthplace of hula — on Saturday, with performances, music, crafts, and food booths, from one of which we got the most AMAZING mahimahi tacos.

Molokai is not a place of action, any kind of action at all (except a widespread disgruntlement about developing La’au Point, illustrated by the many dozens of homemade signs by the road, e.g. “NO LA’AU!”). In that way, it’s kind of awesome. They just don’t appear to give a fuck about any kind of industriousness at all — frex, the one “upscale” place, the Lodge at Molokai Ranch, looks nice … but the food BLOWS and the service is half-assed at best. As far as local industry/local pride, there is a coffee plantation, revived a few years ago that just this month had enough of a harvest to put out 100% Molokai-grown coffees (I bought some, obv) — but it’s owned and run by some businesspeople from California. There are about six restaurants — two were crap (the Lodge, and the Hotel Molokai … potato flakes, need I say more?), one was pretty good (Molokai Pizza Café), and one was AWESOME (Kualapu’u Cookhouse, now with a sister place, Kukini Cookhouse, on the Big Island); most closed by 8:00, and only the Cookhouse used any kind of local ingredients — I guess this is the San Franciscan in me, but why aren’t they all using local produce, local fresh fish, serving Molokai coffees and whatnot? I suspect if you asked a Molokaian this, you’d get a blank stare and a shrug. They do not give a fuck — they like it the way it is, just fine. And I gotta respect that type of commitment, honestly.

I could go on — the hilarious one-strip airport, the chatty couple we met in the Island Air terminal in Honolulu and whom we kept running into all week (small island, brah), the creeptacular abandoned hotel on the same property as our condo complex, the grocery store that still gives out stamps instead of using a card, the two radio stations that played only Hawaiian music (awesome), the great vistas and isolated feel of the place — but I’ll stop here, since this post has gone on long enough. I’d recommend Molokai only to hard-core adventurers (kayaking, hiking, horseback riding, etc.) or to anyone trying to escape — REALLY escape — U.S. mainstream life. It was great, but in many ways, it’s farther away than you can imagine.

Of rugby shirts and high-waisted jeans ...

From a thread on a board I frequent:

Five very 1992 things about my freshman year of college:

—everybody had the Singles soundtrack CD; Sonic Youth played at FBH; shows I saw that year included the Lemonheads and Lenny Kravitz
—We watched Beverly Hills, 90210 on the common-room TV. In real time.
—The big campus issue was divestiture (by our school and its endowment) from South Africa
—There was widespread drunken celebration of Clinton’s election (I may or may not have drunk-dialed my brother in the midst of same, to share the awesome)
—Nobody (NOBODY) had email; my work-study job involved a lot of faxing

How 'bout y'all?

PS: I'm'a be off the grid till Tuesday, the 22nd -- Molokai may have the Internets (a series of tubes), but I ain't gonna be on 'em. Alohaaaaaa!

This Sunday, tell Mom you have NO IDEA what she likes, at all.

OK, so, Mother’s Day is Sunday. (Too late to get them cards in the mail now, suckas!) Besides my annual question to the universe — specifically, “How is it that I came to be in charge of making sure my mother-in-law gets a card and a present, when she’s MR. GLEEMONEX’S actual mom?” — I have this year some thoughts on the subject of what does and does not make a good Mother’s Day present, with notes for future reference in re: myself.

Not good presents:
—Jools. Exceptions granted only in the case of a kid making something him- or herself.
—Handbags.
—“Intimate wear.” Oh my.
—Candy (unless it comes from Recchiutti).
—Knickknacks, gewgaws or trinkets.

Good presents:
—Books, either ones you know she’ll like, or a gift certificate. You deserve a large mosquito bite in your most personal regions if you give your mother one of those Oprah-cult type books (the printed equivalent of a king-size super-maxi-pad with deodorizing scent) or a fucking “Chicken Soup” thing.
—Tickets to a baseball game (or something else she is a fan of — YOUR preference should have very little to do with the selection).
—A B&B gift certificate — let her decide whether it’s for herself alone, her and your Dad, her and a friend, her and a “friend,” her and you, her and your sister (who always was the favorite anyway), etc.

General notes:
—When thinking of a gift or planning something for her, try to think of her as your actual mom, a real person with interests and whatnot, instead of the Generic Mom Character in Macy’s ads. Hell, maybe she likes jools and handbags — shouldn’t you know the answer to that by now?
—Don’t ever give your mom something she has to take care of (a pet, a plant more needy than a cactus, anything that needs dusting or polishing) unless she specifically requests it.
—Don’t cause her to have to DO anything to make the day a success — she shouldn’t have to round everybody up to head to a restaurant, or shop and prep for the family BBQ, or wait for your lazy ass to get out of bed at 2:30 p.m. Just please take care of shit, OK?
—Don’t forget it. She may say she doesn’t care about such a bullshit Hallmark holiday, she may even be as curmudgeonly a bitch as I myself am, but deep down, she totally does care — you don’t have to send her on a trip to Paris or anything, but would a card and a phone call kill you?
—Don’t make this the only time you ever acknowledge your mom and tell her you love her, either; she thinks of you every day, so give a little of that back, wouldja?

At least six different kinds of wrong

People. You know my Thing about pickles, right?

Well, courtesy of reader srah, I've learned today about a thing I should never, never have learned. About.

Kool-Aid pickles.

This item comes from the Delta, as a great many awful/wonderful things have in American history, and simultaneously horrifies and intrigues me. I'm not a fan of sweet-n-sour in general (I love both, to nasty extremes, but not together), so ... I dunno.

My first reaction: blearrrrrrrrrrggghh! But then I got to thinkin.

yes. no. NO. well maybe. but no. yes? I dunno. no, for sure no. but then, maybe ... no? but yeah? surely, surely, no. (etc.)

The year of living soberly

Internets, it’s time I fess up: Despite my incessant large talk about booze and how great it is (seriously, it is), I haven’t had a drink since early January. That's the longest time I've been totally sober since I was, like, seventeen. It blows.

So why am I doing this? I have, shall we say, a medical condition, which requires abstention, and this situation won’t change until the end of September; the condition is therefore limited timewise, which is good (nay, a mercy of the gods), but it is near-absolute for that time. Jesus Christ, sometimes I wish it were the seventies.

Things — things have changed in my life because of the sad lack of booze, and I can no longer carry on this charade (please pronounce that in your head as “cha-RAHD,” just this once). I’m going to have to start blogging now and then about the effect teetotaling has had on my lifestyle (thus the new tag, representing as galling an idea to me as it must be to you: clean livin).

I’ll take it easy today, and start with a list:

The Perks of Not Drinking
1) No hangovers.
2) Easy on the household budget.
3).

Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

These little-town blues / Are meltin' away

Reader Melanie, of the veddy interesting family/food/soap pr0n blog Mallowdrama, responding to yesterday’s post, said her young daughter is fascinated by New York City as well, and wondered when the thrill wore off for me. I started to answer in the comments, but as my screed went longer and longer, I thought it might work better out here, in the fresh air, for all …

I understand where your daughter's coming from, Melanie -- I had a Thing about New York from early childhood on. Maybe it was how much I read (so many of the great children's books are set there), maybe it was my fixation on ballet (specifically, becoming prima ballerina for the New York City Ballet), definitely it was cemented by the trip my mom and dad took me on when I was nine (a flush year for my dad's writing, I guess), but that soul-deep love of the city took hold early and strong, and is still with me. I miss the hell out of that place, even though when I left, I was ready to leave -- I always thought I'd move back, but you never know what the future holds, do you?

My mom felt the way you seem to about it, btw -- not thrilled with the thousands of miles between NYC and Cowburg, Texass, to say the least. I hated that part too, but -- I was drawn there. Columbia was my first choice, and once I got accepted, there was no question as to whether I'd go (yay, need-blind financial aid!).

The thrill never left me, as you can tell, but four years of living on a stoodent budget (w/o a dime of help from home), the prospect of sharing a 2BR apartment with like four other new grads for $800/mo. each (1996 prices), scrabbling against other Ivy B.A.s for an entry-level publishing job (at a sweet $18K/yr) -- it all wore me down and I bailed for Texass, which turned out to be a 20-month sprint through grad school and then a no-looking-back ass-haul with Mr. Gleemonex to San Francisco even before the ink was dry on my M.A.

In nine years out here on the left coast, I’ve become for all intents and purposes a Californian. So many things feel so right about this place, and at this point it’s very difficult to imagine leaving, but San Francisco just seems like a toy city by comparison, and I still feel like a New Yorker at heart — I live and die by the Yankees’ fortunes (or misfortunes), my sacred Sunday ritual is coffee and the New York Times, we got Sirius satellite radio specifically because we couldn’t stand to lose our daily dose of Howard Stern, NYC bloggers (probably half of my daily rounds) feed me but also cause me heartache and jealousy sometimes, and of course in this land of hippy-dippy passive-aggression choked with starchildren and other entitled but ignorant and underexperienced a-holes, Mr. Gleemonex (a native New Yorker) and I are two of the most curmudgeonly, sarcastic and caustic people I know (but with HEARTS OF GOLD, I tell you! Hearts of gold). Heh.

So — it’s complicated. And now I’m sort of afraid that if I were ever to move back, it wouldn’t be the New York I remember, and I wonder if it’s better just to visit, and keep “my” New York the way it was …

"There is no such thing as global warming." Yeahh.

So it's going to be in the low 90s in San Francisco today -- it's already around 80 -- and I tell you what, for this one day, I'm ignoring the fact that soon enough this whole town will be underwater, and I'm going out to run -- OUTSIDE. Not on the treadmill, away from the whipping winds and the frigid arctic blasts of the typical SF day -- no, I'm going OUTDOORS.

Walking to work this morning -- in a miniskirt and flip-flops! -- it felt like walking to my summer internships in New York back in the day. Warm, with a hint of the genuine hotness to come soon enough. Mornings started later in NYC -- people here get to work at 8:00, an unholy and inhuman hour to begin work, if you ask me -- so I'd be right in the thick of the morning rush at 9:00, 9:30 (Intern Time). The subway was, of course, a steambath, but it wouldn't be as bad in the morning as it was in the afternoon on the way home -- it would still feel somewhat refreshing to come up out of the tunnel in the a.m. I'd usually stop in at whatever was my corner deli at X Unpaid Gig for an iced coffee regular and an onion bagel w/scallion cream cheese, and try not to sweat too much in my College-Budget Kind-of-Officewear (no flip-flops -- it was the early '90s, and the East Coast) before I even got to the building to begin another day of stepping and fetching (and in one horrible, memorable case, cold-calling for product placement). Good times, good times.

Another kick-start to the mornin'

San Francisco is such a fucked-up town. This morning, one of my co-workers was on her way into work, walking through the financial district in her very stylish outfit (seriously, this girl has style enough for any fourteen other people, and plenty left over). She got the heel of her shoe stuck in a grate and walked out of it -- a common enough occurrence in any city. She turns around to pick it up, but some homeless guy with blue hair grabs it and starts booking down the street. She's standing there like, "What the FUCK just happened here?" You can't really run with one stiletto on and a coffee in your hand, plus, seriously -- did a bitch just steal my SHOE? Luckily, there was a MUNI driver just ending his shift who saw the whole thing as he stepped off his bus -- he gave chase, caught the guy, and wrestled the shoe back from him a block and a half away, with no lasting harm done.

I gotta wonder if this sort of thing happens in, like, Minneapolis or San Antonio -- and I'm thinkin, probably not. Probably not.

[PS: No, that's not me or anyone I know in that photo, starring the famous Bushman of Fisherman's Wharf.]

Revulsion

It actually physically pains me to see this much energy expended in the direction of Granthony.

She should be shaking with relief and dripping with nerve-sweat, coming off that mad adrenaline spike from having dodged a moist, mustachioed bullet. Instead, she's berating herself like she's just told Derek Jeter to go fuck himself and take his marriage proposal with him.

And the worst part is, we all know this is just a diversion, a tiny bump on the road to Liz + Granthony 4-Evah. Glurrrrrrrgh. I feel sick now.

Call me cynical, but ...

... my first reaction to today's FBOFW wasn't "Awwww yeah! De-NIED!" and a little victory dance celebrating Granthony getting tired of Liz's bullshit and moving the fuck on.

No. I'm afraid my reaction was, "Ten bucks says he means his daughter." And they'll all go Together As A Family, and thanks to the roofies in her second glass of Cook's, Liz will realize that her career is for shit and what she really wants is to be a stepmom to the Spawn of Therese and start procreatin' her ownself.

Can't wait for the basement wedding, attended by a heavily-Benadryled Francoise and officiated by a Raggedy Andy doll with one button eye missing. Granthony will fashion a longer chain for the ankle cuff, special for the occasion.

A note on pronunciation

I realize that I used the phrase, "Oh my," in my most recent post, and that I kind of do that fairly often. It probably looks stoopid to the uninitiated, like something your Great-Aunt Myrtle says when she finds something terribly shocking, such as seeing a young man who has long hair, "like a girl."

But when I say it -- or write it -- I'm saying it in the voice of the immortal George Takei, the way he does a dozen times during every appearance on Howard Stern (which has been my wake-up radio voice every morning since 1993). It is AWESOME, these two words in his deep, cultured voice, with the emphasis on "oh" and the drawn out "myyy."

I'm powerless to stop saying (writing) it, so let's all please agree to hear it that way.

Takei rules.

Monday night rocktacular

Oh, Internets, so tired today — out late last night — and yet so happy and satisfied — cause what I was out late at was: SLOOOOOO-OOOOOAAN!

Hot DAMN, do I love this band. It’s the third time I’ve seen them, and this show — at the Independent — may well have been the best (the other two were at Slim’s, my other favorite venue for live music in SF). They have so much fun onstage, and they won’t let even the most dead-assed SF crowd just stand there — there’s going to be high leg-kicks, fuckin’ around, windmilling, and if all else fails, Chris Murphy will call you out personally. My drummer friend, the Living Lebowski, came along with Mr. Gleemonex and I, and he had a kickass time without even really knowing their music beforehand. He loved it that the band members occasionally switch instruments, trade out lead vocals, and rock so hard — they’re tight, even though they’re loose enough to roll with the mood.

Post-show, I hung the famous Gleemonex rack over the edge of the stage and got a roadie to hand me one of the setlists — rawk!

And but THEN! While standing in line to buy a Sloan belt buckle (for my guitar strap), I spied yon Mr. Murphy walk out into the milling leftover crowd at the edge of the stage. I was like, fuck this line, and ran over there. I shook his hand, noticed that he has dreamy eyes and is maybe a couple inches taller than my 5’5”, and said “Oh man, I LOVE your bassin!” He said thanks, and I added “I’m a bassist too!” (without qualifying it with what a noob I am at the sport). He asked me what I played, I said “A Fender J-bass,” and he goes, “Whoa, that’s a big one!” appreciatively. I said “Yeah, I can barely handle it, but I like the sound — anyway, helluva show — thanks, man!” And then I got him to sign the setlist and my ticket and got out of his way. He was SO nice, and so tolerant of my fangirl blithering. Squeeee!

A little bit later, while I was back in the merch line, he and the Living Lebowski had a chat about Rush (both are fans, oh my), which was hilarious (Mr. Gleemonex stood a few feet away from that, trying to hold in his laughter so he could overhear what they were saying, which is how I know this).

So anyway!

If you’ve never heard the power-poppy, Beatles-y music of Nova Scotia’s Finest, I recommend you start with either One Chord to Another (1996), Pretty Together (2002), Between the Bridges (1999), or Navy Blues (1998), and sort of work your way backwards and forwards. For my money, Action Pact (2004) is the weakest, but to each his or her own — I know there’s something in there for everyone to love!

And if Sloan’s coming to your town, you should totally go.

The more you ignore me, the closer I get

You know, a smart woman — one with a sense of self-preservation, a desire to avoid teetering off the thin edge of sanity, a smidgen of control over her habits — would have read today’s FBOFW and permanently blocked that site from her computer.

But obsession, she is a crazy multi-tentacled bitch. And she’s got a sucking hold on me.

Your Gleemonex may have at last run out of things to say about all this crushing, grinding, ham-handed inevitability. Candace was my last hope — remember when she was the unconventional, free-spirited one who spoke her mind? Remember how she called Dee on the “planned accident” and whatnot? Well, it hurts to see hope die …

And things would be different if I thought for one moment that Liz found Pornstachio to be even the slightest bit attractive or interesting or … fucking ANYTHING! I dunno, maybe she’s actually into bondage scenarios, or something. But it’s so clear that he’s the Male Person of Last Resort for her — she’s so obviously settling. I mean, “Oh well, whatevs, I guess” is not what you want in a DATE, much less a life partner. Three BILLION men in this world, and she feels like the choices are down to Granthony and nobody. GOD. Ugh ugh uggggh.

Facts, perhaps unpleasant to hear

Kiosks around the city dispense a number of free Learning Annex-y type “course catalogs;” a current one features a sultry tropical gal looking over her shoulder at the camera with a mixture of lust and scorn, while the headline copy asks: WHAT DO WOMEN WANT? Which I assume you can take an Adult Ed class to find out.

Got news for ya, fellas: If you’re sitting around wondering something as sexist and out-of-touch as “what do women want?” I can virtually guarantee you one thing: It ain’t you.