You KNOW bin Laden had to've enjoyed gettin orange slices after soccer practice!

Abe Kanan and Rodney Mullen Are Awesome For Entirely Different Reasons

1. Abe Kanan: I have the Stern channels on Sirius in my new pimpmobile, so I am finally getting to hear not only Stern but also my new discovery, the Abe Kanan show. It is f'ing HYSTERICAL. They just talk about stuff (sharks, Rottweilers, Abe Lincoln), and when you try to tell your fellow Stern/Kanan fanboy of a husband what they were talking about, it kind of dies in the translation, but OMFG I thought I might have a stroke in the Whole Foods parking lot the other day when they were talking about dictators' and other maniacs' adolescences -- "Was Hitler, like, always a dick? Or did he get book-checked a lot in the hallways at school and that's what MADE him a dick?" "Bin Laden musta been a little bit cool, he was 6'7" and played soccer -- when he was a kid you KNOW he had to've enjoyed gettin orange slices after soccer practice!" See? You're not dying of laughter -- but if you heard these guys say it, you would be.

2. Rodney Mullen: Holy skinny, wiry Shatner would I have been an annoying skate nerd back in the day if I had any notion that this world existed. I've come to know about Bones Brigade from Mr. Gleemonex, who WAS into this stuff back in the day; this weekend, we watched the 2012 Bones Brigade autobiography Stacy Peralta made -- it was absolutely fascinating. This feels like how I got into the Pixies around age 30, since I missed them almost entirely the first time around (would have been a full 100% cultural miss if not for the Pump Up the Volume soundtrack -- but now I play bass because of Kim Deal and kind of almost might someday get a tattoo of their logo). And while I have written here before about Tony Hawk, whom I continue to love, I gotta tellya, I'm developing quite a Thing for Rodney Mullen (at least the current incarnation of him, all bedraggled and wistful and strange and reflective, beautiful like a musician over a mind like David Foster Wallace or some shit). He is so goddamned interesting, and I can't figure him out, and that's sofa king cool, man.

They're real, and they're spectacular.

Note to self: Please, please stop trying to buy bras via the Internets. You keep doing this, and doing this, and doing this, and all it gets you is shipping charges, dashed hopes and body dysmorphia. Go to the goddamn store and get goddamn measured and try on some goddamned bras. Yeah yeah yeah you got two kids, when're you ever gonna have an hour to stand in the goddamned Macy's dressing room getting harassed by the bra lady. I don't know, figure it out. Christ. You with the Internets bra-buying.

Kevin Bacon Can't Dive Nor Run For Shit

You know guitar face? I am pretty sure that when I am in my "ballet workout" class I am making a really king-hell ballet face while I'm trying to stumble through the combinations without embarrassin myself. I have never actually seen my own ballet face -- which from the feel of it involves knitted brow, pursed lips or tight-jawed grimace (depending), and visible attempts to keep count of the steps -- because I am concentrating on coordinating my feet, ankles, knees, turnout, arms, core, 39-year-old buttocks and assorted clicking, cracking body parts to achieve something like what the adorable 21-year-old teacher demonstrated. If someone YouTubed it, I'd be Internet famous in like five hours. But I do not care, because that class is awesome.

It's funny; it took a lot of work to get myself to start going to this class (which is held at my daughter's dance school at an hour when moms can attend after the kids are in bed), mostly sorting through and discarding rancid bits of old mental garbage from my actual ballet years (ages 3-13, more or less) -- the body image stuff, the perfection hurdles, the voices of ballet teachers from the Third Reich correcting my every move with cold and somehow threatening disappointment. And what was left after I threw out all that stuff, hopefully for good, was: a really absorbing, interesting, challenging and joyous hourlong workout.

The vocabulary -- which is all in French -- came back like I'd never forgotten it in the first place. The barre work I love so much, I swear I could do it all day long. I'm thrilled by how grand my battements are, and humbled by how sloppy my fifth position is; proud of the height and precision of my points during changement, yet kind of appalled by how sketchy my balance gets in the one-legged moves. My entire attention is required -- it may be the one hour a week in which my brain isn't hamsterwheeling, so it feels like I've been on vacation or something when I'm done. I'm sore in weird places, I'm conscious of the tiny muscles in my feet, I'm irked by the fact that I have to wear a very serious athletic bra (Christ those things bind!), it is kind of a drag to get motivated to go at the very end of a long day during what would normally be my Scotch-pouring time, and still I love it.

I don't, like, have a real point here, or an ending. No, wait -- here's one: Kevin Bacon Can't Dive Nor Run For Shit. Nine seconds that you will re-watch one hundred times until your eyes are so swollen from laugh-weeping that you can't see it anymore and then you'll re-watch a hundred more times just to hear it and laugh until you die!

We were, after all, the absolute cream of the national sporting press.

So at the gym this morning, I'm going hard on the elliptical (one of those things where it's really great that I'm almost 40 and no longer care what anybody thinks of what I look like, cause y'all, I'm gettin my workout on and it ain't pretty, what with the multiple speeds, the creative arm positioning, the sprints, the low-squatting hammy blasters, the forward-leaning hill-chargings, etc., but it is effective). Got the 9-year-old iPod playing a really random mix of tunes that lift the soul and/or make me laugh (you'd be surprised how much fun it is to act like you're stomping down the beach to the Miami Vice theme). The View, a show I would never watch of my own volition, is on the teevee directly in front of and above me. Mostly I am focused on my workout and the low-wattage reading of Real Simple that distracts me from 45 minutes of this nonsense, but every once in awhile I look up and there's Elisabeth "Totally Not Racist Because: Whoopi" Hasselbeck, really unfairly pretty still, wrinkling her widdle cute nose and furrowing her widdle cute brow over something that my snippets of glances at the closed-captioning reveal includes "and I just think it's not fair" and "95% of women" and blah blah blah, which, whatever Hasselbeck, you never had to work for it and you're a specie of person -- the female Republican -- that I am just astonished by its existence so I don't care what you say because it's bogus and unreal and totally insane. But then I see the words "women who have abortions" come out of her White Republican Concerned Face, and I say out loud, "Ugh, shut up, Hasselbeck." And the lady cruising along on the machine next to me, a 60-ish Wealthy White Republican Female,* choke-laughs and goes "Hasselbeck!" We exchange a "This fuckin' broad!" look that would make Joe Biden proud, and continuar.


----------------------
*Trust me, I know how to spot 'em. 

Into the Ballantine Ale now, zombie drunk and nervous.

A Carefully Curated Selection of Things I Wrote With My Own Hand, Using a Burgundy Le Pen, Which Was My Trademark Yearbook-Signing Pen, In Friends' HS Yearbooks in 1992

We kicked butt in tennis (until we played [Richwhiteyville] girls), and had no need for Body Fluid Cleanup Kits (good thing!). 

not to mention "Austin music" (Soft Cell, Erasure, Depeche Mode)

Ohh, [Jimmy], please come set up the whole computer system and teach the class, while you're at it! You're so SEXY!

Trig, with the Pillsbury Doughteacher (who's never farted)

Prom was cool -- "I am not the toilet!"

5 hooks on her BRA!

you saying how fine [D. L.'s] dad is, RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM

90 SECONDS!!!

cleaning up ground-in Funyuns & doughnuts

you and me -- tats this summer!

Once again, a horrendously long year is finally over. 

Remember jumping the speed bump at Chili's?

But now we found ourselves in a position that was hard to explain ... blocking the entrance, thugs yelling at us, bad confusion.

A Carefully Curated Selection of Things I Wrote With My Own Hand, Using a Burgundy Le Pen, Which Was My Trademark Yearbook-Signing Pen, In Friends' HS Yearbooks in 1991

Yeah, well, I'll see him there [at Harvard] -- and later on, monkeys might fly out of my butt

"ACK! Help! Coffee breath!"

my "attitude problem," your "pervert anarchist" problem

WANTED
for child molestaion
PERVERT!
"I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday!"
[over the photo of our "AP" History teacher]

(in Chem: You: "I have tons of homework and [M.] is supposed to call." Me: "Same here.")

FASCIST
< -------
BITCH
-------- >
[over the photo featuring two of our least-fave teachers]

Remember that lunch where I almost wrecked because when we were driving across the McD's parking lot, the guy on the radio goes, "Tonight on Twin Peaks, The Lost Episodes: the midget bites Laura Palmer on the butt!"

You are one of my best friends, so I warn you: Don't go to Baylor!

Pump Up The Volume -- TALK HARD!!!

But in the meantime, for five or six hours, I'd be the most conspicuous thing on this goddamn evil road - the only fireapple red shark convertible between Butte and Tijuana ...

A Carefully Curated Selection of Things I Wrote With My Own Hand, Using a Burgundy Le Pen, Which Was My Trademark Yearbook-Signing Pen, In Friends' HS Yearbooks in 1990

We were within 10 feet of ANDRE AGASSI!!!!

that hysterical night chasing [The Crush]'s brother in Maurice [my Buick]

We may move away from here and of course get married to fine guys and have un-geeky kids, but we'll both end up back in [Cowburg], everyone does, 

YES, I AM HITLER REINCARNATED [written on the Band Director's forehead]

We had some great times, us "Churchgoing Home Girls!"

I hate Jennifer Capriati

I can't BELIEVE we're this old already! We're gonna be JUNIORS!

I am still vaguely haunted by our hitchhiker's remark about how he'd "never rode in a convertible before."

I am pretty sure that the sight of me in my shiny tricked-out new seven-seater hybrid vehicle, butt-dancing and shouting along to Kriss Kross on the unreasonably good stereo (turned up so high that it annoyed the kid and really confused the baby) was fairly pathetic/hilarious from the outside -- but oh my Shatner was it awesome on the inside! I've been riding that high for three days now.

'Cause I'm the miggida miggida miggida Mac Daddy
the Miggida miggida miggida Mac
'Cause I'm the miggida miggida miggida Mac Daddy
the Miggida miggida miggida Mac

I make you wanna

[4x]
Jump Jump
The Mac Daddy make you jump, jump
A Daddy Mac will make you jump, jump
Kris Kross will make you jump, jump
uh huh uh huh

Unrelated Question: Are the Golden Globes always like that? We recorded it because of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and kept watching because it was a total, utter mess of hilarity, drunkenness and space-casery. If it's always like that, well, friends, I been wasting my got-damn time on the Oscars all these years.

I had a terrible vision of Lucy crashing into Barbra Streisand's dressing room at the Americana and laying this brutal story on her.

I took a class at Columbia called Suburbia and Its Cultures, and while it was excellent and one of my favorite classes I took the whole four years, it was nowhere near as hilarious as the thing that happened on Monday night in my 'burb.

Our next-door neighbors, who've lived here for 25 years, are this family, the Whites:* Otto, Angie, and their youngest daughter, Ruth, who's about 19 (the two oldest White children are grown & out of the house). Angie is pleasant and neighborly (to us) but, unfortunately for the world, an evangelical nutter (she, um. apparently writes these "books"? with titles like "The Woman In The House" or something? yeahhhh ... ) who homeschooled all three of these kids; I've never met the older two, but Ruth is a very soft-bodied, soft-personalitied young lady of almost shocking unworldliness. Otto is a nice guy from whom, as it turns out in one of those small-world type coincidences, we happened to buy our hybrid automobile five years ago (and to whom we have now given our godless liberal money once again, in the form of purchasing another new hybrid automobile a couple of weeks ago).

So, with her last child "graduated" from "school," it seems like Angie's got some time on her hands, and she's gettin all het up for our neighborhood to get to know each other. I actually like this idea; I think it's a good thing to recognize your neighbors by sight, find out a couple names, exchange pleasantries, etc. So I go along with the newsletter (including providing its only non-White content so far), and I show up to the "dessert potluck" she organizes -- this is the happening from Monday night. It's at the home of another neighbor couple, 27 years in their house -- Middle Eastern artists with amaaaaazing Brazilian hardwood floors -- and draws representatives from about seven of our street's ~14 households (not bad for a first meetup).

We neighbors all stand around and chat for a bit, eating desserts and drinking; the hostess, the one other neighbor I've met, and I all drink wine, whereas everyone else sticks to coffee & tea. Most people are cool, but it becomes obvious pretty quickly that this one guy -- Man Talker -- is used to being Listened To about all things A Man Should Know. One of those conversational dominators who always has the answer and is kind of daring you to try to go toe-to-toe with him, like you even fucking care. Ugh.

Then we get to the main attraction, which is an appearance by a metropolitan police officer Angie apparently used to tutor when he was a teen. He shows up in full uniform, and he's pretty great -- pleasant, calm, down-to-earth, the kind of guy I appreciate being a cop. Angie launches right into "the reason we asked you to come," which was "the homeless encampments" at the creek nearby, and "all the crime they bring."

Now, y'all -- crime. CRIME. I'm from a small town where we used to leave the doors unlocked and the car keys in the car ... but I've lived in upper Manhattan in the 90s, and San Francisco, and London (briefly), and ... let me just say: These fucking people on this high-income, low-density white-ass block don't know a goddamn thing about crime. Or homeless people. The cop was very low-key and reasonable about this paranoid, not-so-borderline racist line of chatter -- he's all, yeah, ok, around here there's the occasional auto theft, auto burglary, home burglary, but not much of that even happens, and if it does, they're just lookin for money or things that're easy to steal and sell, they don't want to tangle with you, etc.

Angie and Man Talker weigh in about "those people," who are, naturally, from "broken homes" ("single mothers with five kids," mutters Man Talker, in pure code for "black and brown people") and "on drugs," and Angie's all "and isn't it true, Officer, that when the economy's bad like this -- and it's getting worse, of course** -- there's more of this type of crime?" which he's forced to concede that yes, in tough economic times people get more desperate, sure, but ... and an older lady says, "Well, what do you do if someone breaks in while you're home?" which is Man Talker's cue to saddle up on a favorite hobby horse, with full panniers of sarcastic verbal airquotes: "You have a duty to retreat. You have to call 911. You can't engage unless --"

The cop interrupts, "No, I mean, yes, call 911, but you know, if you're in fear for your life --"

Man Talker, seizing triumphantly upon what he believes will be catching the officer out on protocol: "California doesn't have a Castle Doctrine [because it's such a pussy commie liberal homo state where Men are not free to be Men]! Blah blah blah top THAT, policeboy!"

To which the cop replies, calmly, "It isn't necessary. Those are completely superfluous laws. In any state, including California, you are well within your rights to defend your life and your family from imminent threat with whatever weapon you have available." Total silence from Man Talker. Awesome.

I wanted to go up and high-five the guy, but I settled for writing "Castle Doctrine" in my notes and smirking to myself. The evening went better from there, although Man Talker went back to bloviating after the officer left (weasel). As a follow-up, Angie emailed everyone to basically order us to write a letter thanking the cop, which -- seriously, F you, lady. We all thanked him in person, individually, and I don't need you teachering me about writing a thank-you note. I am the fucking Empress of Thank You Notes. I'll write a thank-you note whenever I fucking feel like it -- you need to watch less Fox "News" and get out among people you don't personally homeschool every once in awhile.

Then I walked home with the cool neighbor, whose kids go to the schools my kids will eventually go to, and we talked Hawaii and how awesome it is that the middle school is an arts magnet school.

Suburbia, y'all. Suburbia.


---------------------------------
*Not their real names.
**Which is code for, "Thanks, Obama!"

"Finish the fucking STORY!" I snarled. "What HAPPENED? What about the GLANDS?"

In re: my birfday, which was Sunday: I find it endlessly amusing how wired Mr. Gleemonex gets on the eensiest amounts of caffeine and/or sugar. I'll be on my third double espresso (several sugars per -- and I won't tell you exactly how many so you can't yell at me when I finally get the diabeetus), just barely swimming my way out of brain fog, and he'll have eaten, like, three M&Ms and be bouncing his knee under the table, blinking rapidly, getting the shakes, all "Sowhat'rewegonnadonextwhat'shappeningareyoufeelingthisIgottagoforarunorsomethingWHOA."

And I laaaaaugh and laugh. Hee. Such a caffeine lightweight, Shatner love 'im.

Tomorrow I'm gonna write about the little neigborhood meetup I was a part of on Monday, because that there is some prime suburbia nonsense and hilarity, but right now I gotta go tend to Danger Baby before he figures out how to hotwire his crib, fly it out the window, and take a few laps around the valley before spilling out on our lawn and getting up all Pee-Wee Herman style "I meant to do that."