bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot

Thought-Taco Thursday

--I'm boutta get into cricket, gods help me. Mr. Gleemonex got me started on this GD documentary series called Cricket Fever, which (at least the season we've watched) follows one team -- the Mumbai Indians* -- through a season in the IPL. I had, at first, no fucking clue what the goddamn hell was going on during the games (although I immediately got swept up in how exciting they are); by the end, I had like a tiny, asthmatic, wobbly-but-tryin-real-hard clue what was going on, although you could still tell me literally any cricket fact and I'd believe you, even if it was "Traditionally, every fourth guy who bowls has to do it ass-out, no pants on at all." I definitely wish they'd do it Pop-Up Video style, with context clues and further explanations, e.g. "Hardik Pandya is the Tim Lincecum of this team" or "The Mumbai Indians traveled 1,800 miles to this match, hopefully by air?" or whatever. And BOY do I have questions: How come all the players except the overlarge Aussie beast Mitchell McClenaghan are so THIN? and Where are all the women fans? and What in the White Cultural Hegemonic Nonsense made the team owner do that to her skin? and Oh so he's TRYING to throw it at the batsman's feet? and I'm sorry, what is an "over," again? and Ohhhhh my god YIKES this is a literal auction (to draft/build teams), English history of slave-trading WHAAAT??? holy shit, and (etc. etc. etc.). I fucking love it.

--I'm reading Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and y'all, it's really good, but wow, did she have a hard life. Harder than the Ingallses had it in the Little House books, by an order of magnitude. Yikes. (BTW, lemme also wholeheartedly recommend Caroline, A Little House Story -- basically a book-length fanfic of LHOTP from Ma's perspective, and I mean that in the very best possible way.)

--Mike Holmes is back! I went randomly looking at old posts -- I'm tryna get this thing going again, even if I'm the only one reading it -- and found one from 2010 that is all about my strange love for the man, the myth, the legend, just days after Mr. Gleemonex found the guy's new show (Holmes & Holmes, where he does projects with his now-grown son). Recurrence Phenomenon FTW!

--Just in case you wondered if my politics has changed since my last active years on here: Fuck yes, I'm way farther left now. And in the national arena: I'm for Elizabeth Warren, big-time, but I will vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is, because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WOULD YOU LOOK AROUND OH MY GOD.

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*That cracks me up -- it'd be like, what, the New York Americans. 

a very delicate balance of cannabis, 12-year Scotch and Zoloft

Who Else Is in the Weed Store At 10:30 a.m. on a Monday? A Partial List

--Me, a 46-year-old suburban mom with Elizabeth Warren stickers on the back of my hybrid SUV, still in my workout clothes, having come straight from Orangetheory to get my mints (and the CBD balm for my knees).

--Lenny Kravitz's 22-year-old doppelgänger, who spends a lot of time consulting with the budtender before making his (clearly very educated) choices.

--Three mid-50s white guys in well-used coveralls and steel-toed boots, on break from their construction jobs, first taking care of chronic pain issues with some long-acting edibles, and then picking up extra stuff for fun ("Yeah, this's for the weekend!" one of them laughs, high-fiving LK22yod).

--A heavyset late-20s Asian dude and his similarly-situated Mexican friend (sporting a "Fuck Yeah I'm Mexican!" t-shirt, is how I know), who seem to have recently upgraded to retail weed, after a decade of just having a guy; they talk about gaming in very serious, very excited, but low tones while they're in line to pay.

--A bearded and bespectacled whiteboy twerpo you can just tell is A Writer™️ who needs to tap the profoundly deep well of his Creativity™️ so he can get his novel finished before #PitMad.

--Three other suburban moms, none of whom appear to know each other and only one who probably Speaks to the Manager pretty much everywhere she goes.*

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*Joke's on her, though, cause the manager here is a super-hot 23-year-old gal who would 1000% love to remove the complainant's head, scour the skull clean, and make it into a bong for regular customers to use for sampling the store's wares onsite. 

You can take your daylight and go right to hell with it

Everybody keeps bitching about Daylight Saving Time ending, but I LOVE it. I'm sick to death of this blaring fucking sun (it's really my main beef with California -- this neverending goddamn sunshine -- and I'm fucking serious) and so the getting-dark-at-like-4:00 is fine by me, plus! I can put the kids to bed earlier without them calling BS on account of it's only 6:30. Also the day it happened, and the kids woke me up at bullshit-o'clock, my idea of going out to breakfast was a good one (that didn't end up working out all that well, but that was for logistical and interpersonal reasons, not lack of validity). Thanksgiving -- the best holiday -- is coming, I'm already ordering Christmas presents, and the season of baking has begun. November: The Awesomest Month!

Although the red-jacketed still-black Michael Jackson put in a good effort, the kid in the homemade dinosaur/dragon thing -- ON STILTS -- won Halloween.

Overheard this morning as the school Halloween parade dispersed:

Second-grade girl to second-grade boy, who was wearing the most perfect Luke Skywalker getup I've ever seen: "There were so many Darth Vaders, I don't know which one was your father!"

Bonus good times: Shout out to the Indian kid going as Tupac, complete with fake Thug Life tats. Extremely well done, young sir.

Gentle and soft / smoooooooooth and easaaaaayyy

So I was practicing my bass this morning (I do 10 minutes a day -- at this rate, I'll be an expert pro bassist in four million years!), and I was working on "Hotel California," and I could not stop laughing to myself, thinking of this, which is the most brilliant thing in the history of ever and if you are not watching the entirety of Documentary Now, you are MISSING OUT:

Mad, Mad, Mad Respek for the Mouse

In Which the Blogger Gets Over a Not-Small Amount of Snobbery and Learns to Love -- I Mean, Fucking LOVE -- Disneyland

You guys, the Mouse has got it DIALED.

There is a reason people go there, and then go again and again and again. Every detail -- holy shit, they have every detail covered. Everything from ambient music to shop fronts to the way the queues work -- every perfectly-groomed trash-and-gum-free border planting -- every attendant's themed uniform -- every vista -- every bathroom, for chrissake!  The rides are fun as hell (OMFG, Radiator Springs Racers! Worth the park admission all by itself!), the FastPass system is genius, the workers' commitment to upbeat hospitality is awesome, the experiences of each area and attraction ... holy crap, you guys. I cannot praise this family vacation highly enough -- we barely looked at our phones, except to coordinate our movements and meetups, and we watched precisely zero TV or iPad for five straight days, which is miraculous for us. We walked as much as 13.2 miles in a single day, we blazed from six a.m. to 10 p.m. three days in a row ... we are all fucking exhausted but had such an awesome time! I'm over being a snob about the kind of people who go to Disneyland -- cause now I'm one of them, and I love the Mouse.

Herewith, some thoughts:

• I would under no circumstances attempt Disneyland & California Adventure:
• at anything less than 90% of my optimal health and mobility (CHRIST there's a lot of walking, stairs, walking, getting in and out of small spaces, onto boats, etc., and walking), 
• with any child under 40" tall (the threshold for virtually all the best rides), 
• without the Extra Magic Hour/Magic Morning (obtained either by staying in an on-property hotel or via buying the whole package through Costco Travel -- a whole hour before the park opens to the public. It's worth every penny)
• or with less than a 3-day park-hopper pass (there's no way to see/do everything you want to do in less time without dying of exhaustion). 
• I was under the impression that the FastPass system was pay-to-play -- but it isn't. I won't explain it here, but all it is is, with a little planning, you can skip lines and just ride rides. DO IT. 
• Cars Land -- Radiator Springs -- is the greatest theme park "land" I've ever seen in my life.
• The animation academy -- learn to draw a Disney character in about 15 minutes -- was fun, and not something I'd've thought to do, but Kid Gleemonex wanted to, so we did, and now I want to do more of them.
• The spaces allowed by the queue fencing on all the older rides (basically all of Disneyland, and anything built before, say, the mid 90s) are hilariously narrow -- not built to accommodate today's XXL American Physique, lordamercy. 
• World of Color was kind of meh -- it's supposed to be fountains and fireworks, and it is, but it's also -- primarily -- this weird worship service for The Genius And Wonder of The Most Beloved Dreamster Of All Time, Walt -- WONDERFUL Walt -- Disney. 

She's the reason I know who the Replacements are, although that's a point neither for nor against her.

I guess Winona Ryder is just going to be magickal for me, forever. This is her in Show Me a Hero (a six-episode miniseries about public housing in Yonkers, NY, in the 80s and 90s, by the Wire guy, which Mr. Gleemonex and I finished watching last week). I can never not with her. She is my everything.

I'm going to kiss you now, Gerald.

And she's known in the darkest clubs for pushing ahead of the dames

Apropos of my most recent post, this is the only shirt I'm gonna wear from now on, and I mean every single day and night, forever and ever and ever because I love it SO HARD:

Hat tip to Adrien at the forever-wonderful Looks Good From the Back for finding it -- they do good work over there, and not just on the days they post pics of Idris Elba. Although that is really nice, when they do that; it's a public service provided at no cost to the viewer, like that bat-signal thing the networks run at noon on Tuesdays to make sure you know when we are or are not in a nuclear war.

Plus a whole bunch of New Yorkers

The summer do take a bite, don't she?

Some Books I Have Read Lately, and Brief Thoughts Thereupon

Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood: Short stories, some of which are loosely connected, all of which are goddamn ridiculously good and stick in the brain like oatmeal in a toddler's hair.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast: Cartoon memoir, I guess? Powerful, occasionally funny, occasionally bleak, had the side effect of making me see the silver lining of my parents both dying relatively young and suddenly.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel: Hoooooo boy. Apocalyptic/dystopian, aka right up my alley; Atwoodian, even further up my alley. Absolutely fucking compelling (I mean I for real COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN), and in parts extremely unsettling.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel: Still not finished, but really liking this -- I'm not generally the graphic novel type (the Chast notwithstanding), but it's the perfect way of expression for this story.

Microserfs, Douglas Coupland: A re-read, at an interval of about 10 years. Still love it (although I skimmed a whole lot of the Deep Thoughts About Man and Machine). Fun to see what has and has not changed in Silicon Valley (Apple, for instance, is circling the toilet at the time of the novel -- people hoping for a buyout package so they can leave, Steve Jobs ousted, etc.). Made me ugly-cry at the end.

It's almost medical, what goes on under here ...

Jesus Hopscotching Christ do I love Tina Fey and also David Letterman.

This is beautiful -- and you should also check out the first part of her appearance, because that was the fucking awesomest.

Timothy Simons is as wonderful as Jonah (aka Jonad) is awful. Please to discuss.

You know how lots of times, you'll read more about a writer or actor or musician whose work you really like, and find out they are a total d-bag or serial cheater or anti-vaxxer or a Libertarian or something, and then you're just like, ugh, I wish I hadn't gone looking and found that out. Right?

Well here is the total opposite of that situation: Timothy Simons, who plays Jonah on Veep.

Jonah, the character, is a loathsome, grasping, legend-in-his-own-mind type who both takes and dishes out the worst insults on the regular. He's strange, he's awful -- and in his own way, a true marvel.

Timothy, the actor, is awesome! He's funny, charming, thoughtful, feminist, organically weird -- ever since I stumbled across this blog post of his, I have been reading every interview he's given and fantasy-casting him in all of my favorite books (I see him as Wyatt in Monday, Monday; as Bunny -- who I know is written blond but who cares -- in The Secret History, etc.).

Refreshing, is what it is, to find out more about a public figure and it's all good. Yay, humans!

You can wear my clothes

Anybody wanna know what my 1993 was like?

The 25th Hour, starring Ned and Maude Flanders

MY BOOKS ARE OUT OF BOOK JAIL!!!

I had a happy day a couple of months ago, organizing them. I don't alphabetize, I don't have a real system, but I know the kind of things I want next to each other. Here are a couple of pics of some of the subsections: 

THE APOCALYPSE/DYSTOPIAN/GENERALLY FUCKED-UP SECTION

I mean, Jesus -- global thermonuclear war, 9/11, serial killers, religious fanatics, fucking Tiger Eyes ...

THE NEW YORK SECTION

There's other NY stuff in the Biography and Food/Cooking sections. This ain't all, y'all. 

THE SOMEBODY WENT TO SCHOOLY-SCHOOL, DIDN'T THEY? SECTION

These are on a wayback shelf, I promise. Only an insufferable twat would put this stuff where it would be easily accessible. 

A SHELF OF SOME OF THE GLEEMONEX HOUSEHOLD FAVORITES

Just realized it's missing both To Kill a Mockingbird and Pride and Prejudice;  those are on my bedside table. Must get extras for public shelf, here. 

ono i drobbed it my gum

yoo guys i cannt stoplauvhing


dissis my favrit

When we meet again, it won't be me.

I went super-deep down a rabbit hole the other day, putting together a perfect Halloween costume -- I wasn't really planning on dressing up because although it is fun and cool to dress up, the last few Halloweens have been on weekdays and I have young kids and all we do is make a circuit of the cousins' apartment complex, which hardly feels like worth going to any trouble for, but this year we're staying local and going to do our rounds in a neighborhood that I am assured has an AWESOME Halloween scene, so when Kid Gleemonex asked what me and Daddy are going to dress up as, I suffered a spasm of long-buried need to Do Halloween. SO.

Anyway. I wanted to be this, and it is this that I spent the day working on (trolling every website from Zappos to Lands' End, with large amounts of time on eBay, etsy, and LL Bean):

And but then I was double-checking the shoes, and watched the whole scene:

And realized that age wise, I'm much more properly suited to this (although not, in both cases, nearly so striking-looking):

And now I'm wondering if it would in fact verge on the grotesque to try to do my original idea, and anyway if Mr. Gleemonex won't do this (which he hasn't said yes or no yet):

Then what exactly is my deal? New idea ... new idea. Hm.

"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).

At the beach, at the beach, it's a great day under the sun

So there was this pair of gal pals on the beach, ladies in their ... probably mid-60s, and not the yoga-at-sunrise, charity-board-meeting-at-one, cocktails-at-Muffy-and-Biff's type of mid-60s; regular ladies, like your mom or mine, with all the original physical equipment and whatnot. They were both out and about in fun swimsuits -- I particularly liked Madge's screamin-orange one-piece with the creative cutouts, but Debbie's blue swirly thing was great too. Neither one wore those apologetic, don't-look-at-me old-lady dark suits. And these gals were having FUN, man -- Debbie flat-out lied to Madge to get her into the water to snorkel ("Oh, it's warmer than bathwater -- just come ON!") and Madge yelled at Debbie ("Debbie! You liar! You know I can't stand it when it's cold!" "I know, that's why I said that!" [ancient-pals laughter]) and they both enjoyed some cocktails in plastic cups from the beach club, soaked up the sun, went into the water whenever they felt like it (it WAS warm and lovely, I must say; Madge is even more of a wuss than I am, w/r/t water temp, and that's saying something), just generally had a blast. THAT is the kind of older lady I want to be.

Isn't childbirth grounds for a make-up test?

39/40

So I have a lot of friends who are teachers and even more who are parents, and they've all been going completely spastic lately about whichever standardized testing their kids and/or students are doing this time of year. Like posting on Facebook, "All prayers and good thoughts welcome as Ava Gracelynne's 8th-grade class takes the BARG test this week!" or "Double whammy -- my two are both doing the SPRAT test today and tomorrow! But I think they'll knock it out of the park! Fingers crossed!" or "Oh dear Shatner, just help my students get through DERP week!"

The thing is, though, I used to fucking LOVE standardized testing. LOVE it. It helped that I was always in like the 100th percentile, so the shit was eaaaazzzy, but also it was awesome to have the school routine broken up like that. Hours-long chunks, sometimes even whole days or several whole days, given over to the silent, orderly, deeply peaceful filling out of tiny circles with a #2 pencil. Nobody talks, you don't get more algebra homework, you take a break for some Chee-tos and Coke and then get right back to it (pencils freshly sharpened). It was heaven, or as close as you could get while you were attending public school.

The jerk store called. They're running out of you!

37/40

I might actually die of wanting one of these "Can't Stand Ya" dresses. For real and for serious.

Fun fact: The person who makes them is Erin Pearce, aka the voice of Toodee on Yo Gabba Gabba.

Funner fact: She's 24. So ... like, I guess Old Lady Gleemonex and a youngster of the Millennial stripe could actually get along. All we gotta do is get going on Seinfeld quotes and we're likethis!

My preferred flavor at this time was still Red Sangria. I hadn't puked hard enough from it yet to be put off it. O those golden years.

32/40

So this is the next year, 1992, my senior year at Cowburg High School. This time, a group of us rented a room at the Sandbagger (not its real name), for years the unofficial official after-party venue just a few miles from the TacoJocko prom site. We used my friend D's mom's credit card, with her knowledge and permission; D was a junior, and her mom was kind of out of the loop on this sort of thing, so she was easier to cajole than, say, my own mom, whom NO ONE ever successfully managed to put ANYTHING over on (my mom is and was a fucking Ninja Master at ferreting out sneaky teenage ratfuckery).

ANyway. So we drove ourselves, like six to a car (as you did in those days), did all of our getting-ready at the Sandbagger, had a lovely prom, then went back to the motel for the mayhem. And my god, mayhem it was. There was pool furniture in the indoor pool, Funyuns ground into the carpet, Bud Light and Bartles & Jaymes bottles all over the fucking place, a mix of kids from our school still in promwear, changed into after-prom slutwear, already in pajamas, etc., and kids from all over the county who were invited to the after-party -- and not a person over 21 in the whole goddamn place. I can't imagine what the hotel booking office thought was going on -- our school did this every year. Nobody even called the police, that I'm aware of, which is the most amazing part of this whole stupid story. It was the funnest, except for I kept running into my ex-BF and his new GF and it made me sad so I just drank more (good plan!). Next morning was all about the Funyun cleanup, finding people's fancy prom undergarments (there were at least two lacy bras in the pool), fighting nausea and headaches, finding someplace besides your own room's trash cans to stash the empties, and trying to talk D down off the ledge of a freakout over her mom's Amex getting charged for the "damages" (Funyuns. Those fucking things are from the DEVIL.).

And but so here's me, antes de la fiesta. Woooooooooooo!