Last post of 2008

Gleemonex New Year's Eve Fun Facts!

--NYE is totally Amateur Nite on the drinking/partying front, so I am triply glad to be spending it safely within the Sasquatch Compound at Diamond Mike & Blondie's. (First two glads: spending it w/these friends + Mr. Gleemonex & Kid Gleemonex, and playing music while getting my drink on without having to drive anywhere or pay for anything.)

--The picture at right is not of me. It is from the cinema classic The Van, which you all should run out and buy RIGHT NOW. 

--My Twitter icon photo is of me on a previous NYE at Diamond Mike & Blondie's place; the blonde hair is a cheap wig that I love despite (or because of) how wrong it is for my coloring.

--Mr. Gleemonex and I locked ourselves out of our apartment one NYE a few years ago when we were on our way to the wharf around 1:00 a.m. to agitate the sea lions, our SF tradition. Word of advice: NYE is a bad night to try to find a locksmith or a building super. 

--It's really hard to work retail on New Year's Day with a beer + cheap champagne hangover. Not one of my fondest memories of grad school.

--Only 20 more days till PRESIDENT OBAMA!!!!

Happy New Year, y'all -- see ya in 2009!

I gotcher cash back rewards RIGHT HERE.

So I'm sitting there on hold with a goddamn credit card company (Discover, if you must know, an account I've had since 1994 and haven't used since 1999, because: please), and the hold music is tootling along, and I'm like, "Love touch? Are you fucking kidding me? Love touch? Rod Stewart, you are the biggest douchebag in the history of recorded music." And but then Rod's done and they start pouring "(I've Had) The Time of My Life"* into my ear (sorta like those fluorescing worms in Beastmaster, in aural form) and as the instrumental part crescendoes, with all those really sincere keys and synth strings and whatever, then quiets down for the heartfelt outro, I'm like, "No, you guys are the biggest douchebags in the history of recorded music." But then finally their bullshit fades out and fucking Seals & Croft starts up all "Summer breeze, I am a douchetard"** and I just about lose my will to live. 

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*From the soundtrack of an obscure little indie art-house fave called Dirty Dancing. You might've heard of it, but I doubt it. It's pretty fringe. 

**Those are the actual lyrics. Listen closely next time.

Where are the Frog Brothers when you need them?

OK Internets, goddammit, can we please talk about Twilight for a second?

I know, you’re like, “JESUS H. W. SHATNER, not you, too?!” but take it easy. This is not one of those demoralizing confessions I sometimes throw out at y’all, thank the Pompous, Corseted One. This is where I ask you, seriously, what. the. fuck.

Over the year or so since I first heard of it, I’ve gone from “Not interested, thanks, I’m well past fourteen,” to “Huh, it’s that big a deal, eh? Whatever,” to “Guess I should check it out; after all, I scoffed at Harry Potter till I read it, and that shit fucking rules. Besides, I like YA fiction, done well.” So I had half a mind to stand around in a book store reading it when next I had the chance, but a girl next to me on the bus -- a cute 28-ish Asian woman in professional attire -- unwittingly spared me the effort. She was deeply into what I gather is the first of the series – and given the print size, I joined in with barely a need to conceal the fact that I was reading over her shoulder.

You GUYS. Come ON! Leaving out the fact that it’s about vampires*: There’s all this striding down corridors** and sighing and staring and abrupt turning*** and my god with the ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS! It read like fanfic written by a teenage virgin – just leaden and overwrought and cringe-inducing, the kind of stuff a normal person would find buried in a footlocker in the attic of her parents’ house while home for her 20th high school reunion and realize with shocked and terrified glee that she had a GOLDEN GEM to present at the next Sarah Brown joint -- but instead, this Stephenie Meyer person (who can’t even spell her own name properly) is a multi-millionaire off of it. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!


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*Which, for fuck’s sake, ladies, can we give this up as a Thing that’s supposed to be sexy? Didn’t Tom Cruise prove beyond doubt that it isn’t?
**Corridors? Seriously, corridors? In millennial America?
***On one’s heel, naturally. Is there any other way?

Only one thing could draw me away from the soft glow of electric sex in the window.

Dear Internets: May you best your family members in the Feats of Strength, and may you get your full allotted time in the Airing of Grievances! 

But seriously: Merry Christmas, all y'all, from your old pal Gleemonex. I start baking cookies in about an hour (when the butter and cream cheese have reached room temperature); we'll put A Christmas Story on the giant teevee, wrap a buncha presents, and shake up a batch of Caucasians by around three o'clock this afternoon. Tomorrow is a big blur of turkey, wine, yet another attempt at my grandmother's seekrit dressing, and more Xmas Story. Here's hoping you enjoy yourselves immensely, however you spend the time. Shatner bless us, every one!

Alotta Fagina

Spanish Johnny, a god among men, beat me to it. 

Five o'clock in the a.m., for no good reason

Not satisfied with all the large-scale horrors he's wrought in the last eight years, Il Douche -- owner of the lowest approval rating since the invention of polling, which, to a non-sociopath would be a hint to just shut the fuck up now -- is spending this last month or so of his lame, wingless, SARS-afflicted-duck presidency very carefully and thoroughly caulking all the cracks and spackling all the holes with some grade-A pig shit, just to make sure he didn't miss fucking up anything he could possibly have fucked up. It's his little gift to us, the citizenry -- a ring-n-run* in which he leaves a giant flaming bag of donkey turds at the front door of the White House for us all to step in. 

January 20 CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH. 

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*Um, that's not what we called it where I grew up. But I am trying to rise above my circumstances. 

I do not need another step between me and toast

Internets, it should surprise none of you that I am a compulsive doodler in meetings. Herewith, I give you a selection of:

Things I Wrote in a Notebook During Meetings at Work Two to Four Years Ago (In Which I Remember Neither the Meeting, Nor Writing These Things During Them)

abyssus abyssum invocat
hell calls hell
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Bands:
--Bofus Eyes
--binLaden Family Singers
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Whoooooo’s High-Pitch? This is Kelly Clarkson!
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Do you mine if we dance wif yo dates?
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“People don’t like to read on the Web,” a couplet:
Make it SCANNABLE, keep it SHORT
HIGHLIGHT keywords, use a SPORK
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CorpComm: It’s a gravy, AND a floor wax.
CorpComm: Perfecting the art of plausible deniability.
CorpComm: We couldn’t be more surprised if we woke up on the floor with our faces sewn to the carpet.
CorpComm: Penmanship. Stewardship. Statesmanship.
CorpComm: Man spricht Deutsch.
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Denham’s Dentifrice [extremely elaborate invented logo for fictional product]
… has a business purpose! [jotted underneath]
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No fightin, no cussin
Just love for a drug called ROBO-TUSSIN

Um, what?

YUCK. Rick Fucking Warren? I mean, it ain't a Cabinet post, but I can't say I'm 100% in love with this one, broheim.

Cuts like a knife

Can I please just ask you all: What the fuck happened to Nicole Kidman’s face? I saw her on Letterman (I think) the other night, and it’s like … wow. Um. Jeeeezus. Yikes. Meg Ryan’s is worse, but not by much. There’s all this … twisting, and pushing, and odd ballooning going on. Remember when she used to be naturally pretty but sorta chipmunky, with cute chubster cheeks, the nose she was born with, and curly red hair? And but then Dead Calm was a success, so she Americaned-up her look (went more blond, had a little refinement work done, dropped a few pounds, met and fell under the thrall of Tom Cruise) (as you do), made the seriously awesome To Die For, and then started down a long bad ugly road of tinkering with the original equipment – which puts us where we are today.

Nicole, Nicole, Nicole. Good SHATNER, woman – where does it stop, this eternal terrible chase for the unwinnable prize of eternal youth and physical perfection? You are 41 – it’s debasing, trying to look 21. Who gives a shit about 21-year-olds? I mean, they’re gonna be 41 eventually too, and there’s always someone younger, thinner, prettier, creamier-skinned – why not take the best care of what you’ve got, and wrest free of the power you’ve allowed other people to have over you?

PS: This goes for every woman – I don’t mean to pick on NicKid specifically. Age gracefully, is all I’m saying. To all of us.

Who throws a shoe?

You guys, did you actually see that awesome video of that guy winging his shoes at Captain President-pants the other day? That guy was seriously chucking those shoes – he was not fucking around. There was some real, pissed-off velocity behind the flying Al-didases.

But as hilarious as it was – and it WAS hilarious! -- leaving aside for a minute whatever loaded cultural baggage accompanied the gesture (and of course the fact that the shoe-thrower has probably seen sweet daylight for the last time), it was pretty shocking. I mean, it wasn’t lethal or even really dangerous but it was violent, and I had to wonder how the guy was able to do it not once but twice. Il Douche never travels without an ass-army of security, plus where was the Secret Service? I mean, damn. I hate the motherfucker with the fire of a thousand dying suns, but how’d they let anybody get that close with ill intent? Are they just not bothering anymore, since there’s only like 35 days of this insane bullshit left?

The other thing about it is, Boy Georgie himself didn’t seem all that bothered – I don’t think he should’ve run off screaming like a little girl, but there was a serious shortage of give-a-fuck on his part; he reacted like it was some sort of frathouse shenanigans. The whole incident was just bizarre.

The Clooney called. He wants the whole Ocean’s Eleven thing back.

OK so we were watching Leverage – new show on TNT, starring a strangely younger-than-I-thought, thinner-than-I-thought Timothy Hutton, black guy I think I’ve seen before but not on The Wire, some chick that looks like an older Jamie-Lynn Siegler (who, btw, is just EVERYWHERE these days), some guy who I think was shooting for a cross between Sawyer on Lost and Brad Pitt but landed somewhere around David Foster Wallace, and this spazzy little wiry blonde. We TiVoed it because it has a connection to Mr. Gleemonex’s day job (international thievery) and incidentally it is a Dean Devlin joint, about whom we personally could not give one shit but who is married to this really strange chick with giant blue anime eyes that we knew in college (she was on a soap, and in The Patriot, and ... whatever, she’s married to Dean Devlin – just, never mind. Shut up.).

Anyway.

So, Caper Scene ensues. The spazzy blonde ziplines herself down the side of a tall building, cuts a circle out of the glass window, and, contrary to walkie-talkie admonitions from Hutton, prepares to let herself in, clearly certain she can defeat the various security systems without waiting for backup.

And I go, “Oh man, gymnastic robbing. There’s gonna be gymnastic robbing in this thing.”

Do I have to tell you I was right? Cause I was. Sometimes I hate being right.

In Bromstad We Trust

Internets, I’ve fallen down a few rabbit holes in my time – my Shatner, I lost an ENTIRE DAY to this Sarah Brown joint recently – but lately, Mr. Gleemonex and I have been absolutely mesmerized by HGfuckingTV.

We never channel-surf (we are TiVo people), but at some point a couple of weeks ago, the Happy Fun Box fell upon HGTV and we idly watched the second half of, I think, Designed to Sell ($2K budget to fix up some pathetic disorganized house to get people to buy it) while folding laundry, and then it kept rolling into this staging show (some chick makes you pick up all your broken-ass shit, buys you some area rugs to “define the space”), Property Virgins (first-time home buyers gradually downgrade their expectations, because like DUH!), My First Place (same, but more FAIL; both feature HILARIOUS prices in the Midwest and South and Arizona and whatnot, numbers that are hysterically, head-bashingly funny to the Gleemonexes, who no longer think $759K for an 1100-sf 3/2 is all that terribly outrageous [except that, of course, it is]), Deserving Design (Vern Yip brings pretty to the unpretty who do Good Work), Myles of Style (giggly gal throws together some real vivid hodgepodges, some of which are actually cute), My House is Worth What? (HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE), House Hunters (three houses, the rich douchebags always pick the one I like least), House Hunters International (amazing what $350K will get you in Spain), the one with that stupid big-fake-boobied Constance Ramos (she always just fucks up whatever was already there; Mr. Gleemonex will never forgive her for what she did to this one gorgeous coffee table), Divine Design (sweet bleeding Shatner does that woman like upholstery). We basically sank the weekend on this unholy shit, y’all. We don’t even own our own place – it’s like MIND CONTROL.

But anyway. We have our favorites now, you betcha we do. And the best – undeniably the most awesome – is Color Splash with David Bromstad. BROMSTAAAAAAD! God, we love this fucking guy. He … he knows things. He has talents, he has vision, he has what seems to me a ridiculous mastery of serious technical construction shit – and as a former aspiring Disney illustrator, the man can just stand there in someone’s yard painting a big-ass piece of art, freehand, for them in double-time. It’s crazy. And the color combos – holy balls, is he good. I mean, sometimes it looks like it’s gonna be wheels-off, but he always makes it work, and you’re like, he’s a got-damned GEEENIEEUS. Yesterday, he zeroed in on a piece of glass tile and I was like, “Unnnnh … I don’t know about that one,” and Mr. Gleemonex goes “Shut up, it’s Bromstad,” and I was like, “You’re right. I trust the Bromstad.” And damned if it didn’t work!

So, to sum up: Yay Teevee!

Satan’s Favorite Fruit

Internets, I cannot brook bananas. The whole concept is unsupportable. A cheery, tropical yellow package, crammed full of vitamins and potassium and good nutrition, great fun for monkeys and for dorm RAs who are trying to teach freshpersons how to use a condom – but it’s sheer gaggy death to eat one. My GOD what a horrible taste. And the texture, holy flaming SHATNER the texture. It’s what every food is going to be like in your mouth in hell – dig into that juicy steak? BANANA TEXTURE! Crunch some salt and vinegar potato chips? BANANA TEXTURE! Dip crusty bread into a hot bubbly cheese fondue? BANANA TEXTURE! Satan the trickster wills it so!

The only reason they’re even in my house is, I cut them up for my baby to eat, because she [hack! ptui!] likes them and they’re good for her. But fourteen seconds after they’re out of that loathsome leathery peel, which drapes over your hand and besmirches your clean skin no matter how you contort to avoid it, they start to blacken in the center and get slimy (even the ones you buy almost green). How can something whose natural state is so close to putrescence and decay be good for you? HOW? And why do they smell so bad, like they're off-gassing benzene like a plastic toy made in the worst most neglected chemical dumping ground in China? And why do otherwise normal people ruin perfectly good smoothies and fruit salads and tropical juice blends with this unholy substance? To slice them onto cereal is an abomination, to put them on PB sandwiches is profane, to douse them in chocolate and freeze them is BLASPHEMY, a crime against Shatner and all humanity.

No wonder you directed the one about Satan banging Mia Farrow

Oh for fuck’s sake. Roman Polanski wants the 30-year-old rape charges dismissed against him -- so he can, what, come back to the States and find some more thirteen-year-olds to bang? I saw Wanted and Desired, and the thing is, Roman, you fucking toad, you didn’t “have sex with” that girl. No matter what you want to think it was, you disgusting short-eyed lecher, thirteen-year-olds cannot, by law, “consent” to sexual intercourse with grown men, particularly not after you’ve plied them with booze and ludes. I’m sorry your wife (whom you treated remarkably ill, let’s not forget) was murdered by psychopaths, I’m sorry you had a kind of messed-up life prior to all this, and I can’t deny your directorial talent – but none of that excuses or in any way changes the fact that you RAPED a CHILD. It doesn’t make a goddamn bit of difference that she’s saying the charges ought to be dismissed now – again, sir, let me refresh your poor-me, exiled-in-France, dissolute-life-with-models-and-rich-patrons memory: You are a rapist, and you ducked your prison sentence. Fuck you right in the ear, and stay the hell out of the US. We have enough pustulent old sex criminals here already.

Learnin about Cuba, havin some food

How did I miss what an awesome little goon Tim Lincecum is? I read about him from time to time all last season, but I guess I never saw a photo or video clip ( … sigh … I mean, the Giants, you know? So sad. Besides, too busy watching the Yankees’ consumptive/tubercular dance of death all grim season long to give much time to my local NL boys.) But this guy is fucking awesome – it’s like if Spiccoli pulled his shit together long enough to manage some sort of engagement in sports, and found out he was just ridiculously good at it.

Great Moments in Parenting, Vol. I

Sunday morning, balls o’clock a.m. Gleemonex and Mr. Gleemonex lie half-awake and slightly hungover, listening to 13-month-old Kid Gleemonex on the baby monitor as she holds court in her crib with Cloth Book and Pink Rattly Dog, using the couple dozen words she knows for sure (no, mama, daddy, baby, boxes, kitty, doggy, bird, mooooo, yeah, hello, milk, down, more, &c.) combined with nonsense babble in fluent conversation, with flawless inflection – questions, answers, declarations, imprecations, hilarious jokes. It’s pretty awesome, and more than a little amazing. After a time, they speak.

Gleemonex, somewhat reluctantly: So I guess we have to clean up our language around her now, huh? Stop dropping all those F-bombs?

Mr. Gleemonex, judiciously: Nah. Not until she’s got her pronunciations down better.