The dust of Winona Ryder's dreams

Ohhhhhhhhh shit y'all, Sarah Brown -- I am in severe respiratory distress since reading this crystal nugget of hilarity -- canNOT stop laughing!

I had this whole thing I was gonna say about how I just can't with handbags, no matter how much I like former Sassy staffers (which I do, forever), but that'll keep for another day.

Curated ... by Mario Batali ... [wheezing, feeling faint]

And if you're into food porn, Farmer Boy is the best book in the history of ever.

Some Thoughts on Re-Reading, Out of Sequence and For About the Hundredth Time, the Entire Little House Series

--Goddamn, did people back then do a lot of work. I mean -- every damn thing was so. much. work. Pa had to make his own bullets. You don't get butter all winter long because you can only have butter if the cow makes enough (and fatty enough) milk. Time to get dressed! See you in about a half hour. Would you like some lace on that dress? Get yourself some silk thread and knit the damn lace, then sew it on with a needle and thread in your "spare time." Want some mashed potatoes? Here's some seed potats. Go plant them in the sod and try to keep the varmints out of them and dig up whatever you manage to save sometime next year, then peel them, mash them, and eat them (minus butter, because see above).

--Garth Williams could have spent a few more days at the ol' drafting table working on his human figure drawing. I mean, sometimes he nails it, but sometimes ... well, there are a few in there that look like they might've inspired the Fraggles.

--That family was laid low by scarlet fever. You'll never read such a piteous description of a family as the one that begins By the Shores of Silver Lake.

--Various parts of all the books, but especially Little House in the Big Woods, are so process-heavy that they'd be handy to have around if/when The Shit goes down. Might need to know how to butcher a pig, make a straw hat, and render your own soap when the pipeline stops, ya dig?

--Lots of times, while the work of the house is going on, it's somebody's job to corral the youngest kid and keep her from danger and/or obstruction of stuff, which just proves that that kind of thing is universal.

--I really, really appreciate shit like Gore-Tex and insulation and moisture-wicking fabrics. Because DAMN.

--These books are so well-written and so beautiful -- it really is just such a pleasure to read them, and I'm sorry for anyone whose idea of the books is based on or significantly colored by that stupid hokey 70s teevee show -- y'all are missing out.

I'm silver-plated, I'm underrated / you won't even pick me up cause I'm not enough / for a local phone call

Top six greatest Cake songs, in no order: 

• Frank Sinatra
• Rock n Roll Lifestyle
• Dime
• Short Skirt/Long Jacket
• Guitar
• Satan Is My Motor

It hurt me to leave off ... well, pretty much the entirety of Comfort Eagle, but a list has to stop somewhere. A man got to have a code. 

Change a hawk to dove, stop a war with love

We really need to talk about Wonder Woman. I bet you're all, "Girl superhero! Awesome! Kick his ass, Sea Bass!" But no.

First, like I said a couple of weeks ago, that origin story of hers is complete bunkum. And what lame superpowers she has: spinning, lassoing, talking to animals, flying an invisible jet. Super strength is pretty good, I guess, but there's not enough of it.

Secondly, OMFG was the 70s TV show horrible. I mean -- I watch a lot of bad TV, but this? This is ... outrageously fucking bad. Stupefyingly craptacular production values, even for 70s TV; tons of unironic blaring from the brass section of the made-for-teevee orchestra; worst theme song ever ("in yer satin tights / fightin for your riiights"); amazing long stretches of not a goddamn thing happening. And Lynda Carter -- oh honey. Lynda, if you've Googled yourself and this post comes up, you should stop reading right now, cause I'm sure you're a real nice lady and I don't want to give you a hard time but this is gonna hurt your feelings: I'm pretty sure Shatner's ballsack could out-act her, all by its grey-curly-furred lonesome. It's like she's not a native speaker of English,* and has learned her lines phonetically, with the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LAH-bles. Dig this, in which she's getting a new assignment -- putrefaction has set in. And Debra Winger as Wonder Girl -- the younger sister of Wonder Woman, doncha know -- might be even worse. They've got her made up as some sort of bobby-soxer (the series started out set in the 40s, for completely unknowable reasons), and it's possible she's a prototype of the singing dog/lion animatron thingies at Chuck E. Cheese, because I can't find a spark of genuine humanity in there at all.

Finally, in the kids' picture books they have nowadays, featuring all the superheroes, she looks like a porn star who's trying to go legit but she doesn't really know how the legit world acts and -- heartbreakingly -- all her office clothes for her respectable office job are from Victoria's Secret. She works out with her friends Batman and Superman -- training and such -- and then has brunch with them. Brunch, yes -- in which B&S look like a couple of really cut young dudebros who are totally into each other in a committed life-partner way (not that there's anything wrong with that -- I'm just not sure it's canon).

Why do I know all this? Oh, you know why. The kid's obsessions (who could have imagined how many thousand clips and mixes of this fucking show would be on YouTube? WHO???) respect no mental boundaries.

---------------------------------------------------------
*Which, incidentally, is the code by which we used to refer to Hispanic job applicants back when I worked at the high-end nanny agency in San Francisco. That hell-cunt of a boss of mine would be all, "Does she have English as her first language?" And that answer would be how the applicant got placed in the pool, salary-wise and posh-job-wise. That was FUCKED UP. 

"You were born in Hawaii? You got a birth certificate? Heh."

So just back from the Big Island, still resenting the fuck out of having to wear pants and shoes -- here's a couple of things that were awesome while I was so far off of US Mainland time that I had a hard time connecting news events to reality.

1) Sarah Brown is EN FUEGO. Muy muy incendio. I have been repeating this particular post to myself in my head, verbatim, several times a day since I read it a week ago. (Hey Sarah Brown, btw: I confess I'm bummed about Amy Poehler getting divorced -- not like, freaking out crying, but sort of arm's-length, friend-of-a-friend, but-I-really-LIKE-her! bummed. I want the people I like and admire to be happy. But then, maybe this makes her happy, so ... um. Anyway.)

2) Holy taintballs do I love me some Bill Clinton! That's the only DNC speech we saw a big chunk of (I've seen the rest via tumblr gifs mainly ... remember back when I used to be a poli sci enthusiast, reader of dense books, consumer of news media, writer of lengthy analyses for grades? Yeah ...), and it was sofa king awesome. I would elect him President again and again. The Big Dog, y'all.

3) ICP MST3Ks the "Call Me Maybe" video. Stupidly hard laughter from this girl here, y'all -- and I'm still repeating lines from it ten or twelve days later.

4) This fun little jaunt in the 1992 wayback machine. Awwww, y'all ... how'd I get this old?