"And I HATE SQUASH!"

Ethan Hawke is a known Turbo-Quattro Dickcheese, yes? Like, in every possible real-life way, right? So it's easy to forget how goddamn good an actor he is. But: He is.

We just saw Boyhood last weekend, 100% because of Richard Linklater, and oh you guys, it was so so so good. Nearly a week later and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. So many scenes are stuck in my head, so many feelings still being felt -- GOSH it was something. And but so all of the actors were completely ace, but special mention for Hawke because of what Roger Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary called the "Pentimento Paradigm." TQD Hawke is so good that you actually forget how awful a person he is, and that's talent (grudgingly acknowledged), y'all.

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Pentimento Paradigm: Pentimento is when images from an old painting seep through and become visible in a newer picture that has been painted over the old. Thus the relation is when what we know about a filmmaker or actor seeps into our perception of his film work. Example: Any old Rock Hudson movie now that his private life is no longer private. Being aware of the reality behind the fiction may add to the complexity of the drama (Taylor and Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) or distract from its intentions (Woody and Mia in Husbands and Wives).

Kurt would've wanted it this way.

I already know that the gals' clothing section at Target looks like the infinite version of most everybody's closets from Cowburg High School, c. 1990 right now. And it is mostly amusing -- sometimes in a bitch, please kind of way, sometimes in an ... ahh, youth kind of way. But that still does not prepare me for the sad trombone of the heart that happened when I saw a Nirvana 90 album-cover print on a poly-blend, made-in-some-third-world-hellhole sleep T-shirt in the lingerie section.* I mean ... I know what they're doing, which is figuring out that Gen X has money (and nostalgia issues) and that the Kids Today might like to represent the oldies. But -- it's just -- ugh. It was right there, staring out at me, and -- injustice on top of injustice -- on the same rack with that awful tattooed Sublime cover and a fucking KISS one. Ugh. Boooooo!

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*which I am just passing by -- I've learned my lesson about cheap bras and underpantalones.

A-W-E! S-O-M-E! We're awesome! We're awesome! Like to-tal-ly!

So after Kid Gleemonex's first day of first grade yesterday (she LOVED it and is thrilled to death with her classroom, her teacher, and the one friend from last year who's in the same class, yaaaaaaaaaay!), we are driving past her future high school on the way to get some ice cream for a first-day treat. There's a large knot of San Dimas High School cheerleaders ambling up the road, in uniform (which of course is how we know what their deal is). Kid Gleemonex has a slight interest in cheerleaders, I think because she likes costumes. She says to me, "I think those are cheerleaders."

I say, "Yeah, looks like it."

She says, "Huh." Considering. "Were you a cheerleader?"

"Noooooo! My mom and sister were, though. I never wanted to -- well, no, in 6th grade, I tried out for 7th grade cheerleader [ten-minute digression on tryouts, which are like auditions, but in front of the whole school in this case] -- anyway, I tried out, mostly because everybody else seemed to be doing it, and then I didn't make the team, and I was disappointed for like that one day, but then after I was SO GLAD I didn't -- my gosh, it takes up SO MUCH TIME. And besides, it's -- at least these days, it's a legit sport, it's very very athletic, but I still don't like that it's mostly girls cheering on a bunch of boys who actually play the sports."

Kid G. nods, thoughtful. (The traffic is horrendous, we've gone like a hundred yards in 15 minutes, remind me never to go past a high school at 3:30 in the p.m.)

"I don't want to do it, either."

Me, doing what I always do, qualifying and overexplaining everything, in this instance mostly because I fear her, ten years from now, doing a thing I loathe just to rebel against me: "Well -- you know, if it's something you really, really want to do when you're older, we'll talk about it then ..."

Definitively: "No, I don't want to. It's OK."

That's my girl, y'all. That's my girl.

My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it *was,* you're lucky to get out alive.

So hey, show of hands: Who else is writing a novel set in the early 1990s and just realized that a not-small chunk of it (of which you were pretty dang proud) is actually just a mashup of two episodes of My So-Called Life, including the names of two (2) minor characters?

Oh. Just ... just me then. Mkay.

Uhhh ... what?

So am I the only one who, awakened by the smell of skunk-spray from outside drawn into the house by the whole-house fan at 3:33 a.m. in the GODDAMN MORNING, spends the next hour braincycling with dread about what happens if we lose the Senate this fall and/or if some fuckhead Republican gets elected (or "elected," as in the case of the thug warlord Bush II) in 2016?

Well. Anyway. I surely can't be the only one who CANNOT STOP watching those Snoop-Smoking-Weed-With-People shows, right? Even funnier now that I am 10 years out from my last herbal jazz refreshment. I swear, I could listen to Snoop talk all day long, about anything, ever, forever.

[Sorry for the monthlong hiatus, y'all -- it's been a good summer, but a very busy one, with two kids and no scheduled activities, dig?]