please tune in right now if you can so you can confirm we are right on this.

The Nabob: "Why is Peter Sarsgaard emceeing the National Spelling Bee?"
The G: "Oh my god, he is!"

(So far, I like Prateek. He has a slight moustache, and his interests include playing tuba and science. God, kids rock so much sometimes. His word was just "Randkluft" and he aced that shit.)

"we wrote symbols and themes and motifs! he's a clown!"

one more thing and then i'll shut up: so Michael Cera is only 19. that's okay, right? it doesn't make me a total molester to have a 19 year old on "my list," does it? I mean, Cusack is looking beyond-pufferfish bloated and making movies about child martians nowadays. I think it's time to update.

coppertone ass

new song from OR's next album, The Stage Name, up on myspace. "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe." No opinions yet, mostly because I can barely function today. Oh internet, you're lucky I was even able to type these words.

147 unread work emails

Clark & Michael: "They rested their balls on our chins and brushed our teeth with their dicks"

more later, I'm kind of depressed this morning.

back home/exceptionally cranky

all my plants are dead and I itch.

worthwhile sacrifices to the gods of beach.

It's still better than my dad's and in the end thats all that matters

As my huckleberry pie of a wife pointed out, I’m rockin the modified Hrabosky today after ditching the beard last night. Here’s the pic she took this morning over my normal breakfast bowl of melted raspberry sorbet.* The full growth was getting unmanageable as I was unwilling to admit that this was less of active beard instead of in inactive razor. I was also unwilling to spend any money on any sort of facial hair trimming devices. Nuts to that.

While the beard investigation was an amusing departure from my normally baby-shorn face, this Spurlock is something completely different. It’s completely empowering but in a totally cocksure and irrational way. Every time I catch my new reflected profile in a parked car window I want to turn to any nearby pedestrian and yell “ALL THIS FLORIDE IN THE DRINKING WATER IS A NASA CONSPIRACY!! FUCK ME?!? NO FUCK YOU!?!! BRAAARRRRW!!!” And its ugly as hell.

You got 18 hours left in you, mustache. Live your splotchy life accordingly.

*This actually looks more like the child Ryan Avent and I would produce if we were to have a son. And was a Muppet.

aint nothing like them summer nights/keep the top on drop while the girls looking hot

yay, deleted scenes. yay, full schedule soon.

"what do we want? BRAINS! When do we want it? BRAINS!'

sigh. it's official, zombies are the new pirates. which i think replaced ninjas. or maybe it was robots. I can't even remember at this point.

next stop: vikingtown.

* * *

In other "I'm-so-bored-I'm-spending-all-day-on-Apple-Trailers" news, there was a really sweet German film called "Bella Martha" (or "Mostly Martha") that came out a few years ago. K. and I rented it at a while visiting friends in Tucson, watching it in a complete daze shortly after having our brains liquified by George's sound system ("LETS WATCH A FEW SCENES FROM MASTER AND COMMANDER IT WILL KICK YOUR ASS!") It's a nice little piece. Now Zeta-Jones has decided to make what looks like a maybe craptastic American version. What's his name is way too good looking for this role. Besides, jesus. That chin.

1000% morons

of COURSE i lose my sunglasses the day i leave for vacation. of course.

((ps. my spouse is looking disturbingly like morgan spurlock recently. more on this as the day unfolds.))

Seriously, if he fucks up one more time I’m going to sell him to Michael Vick.

The deal brokered with BD when he came to stay with us was a simple one: he would sleep on the floor at night and not chew up our stuff. Those terms were violated immediately. Fortunately, in the last year he seems to have grown out of his whole “I checked Weddingchannel.com* and have decided to eat all your wedding gifts priced at $120 or higher” phase. But he still didn’t sleep on the floor.

That ended Monday.



There really isn’t much to say here. Chewing = out. Digging a hole into the mattress down to the springs = teh new dogness.




There’s a store down the street next to Five Guys that sells used mattresses. But the signs are only in Spanish so I’m gonna need someone to come with me to help translate/bargain.

*I’ve got a friend who married this horrible woman. Their divorce proceedings lasted longer than the marriage. He discovered that if you search for his exes' name on Wedding Channel you can not only still buy gifts for his old wedding but also for her new wedding. He asks that in lieu of gifts you send her one of those bubonic infected squirrels that the monkeys love to eat.

november rain

courtesy this one: The best idea I never had.

This would be even greater if a similar person didn't already attend my reunion and perform a scaled-down version of what you see here. Except she wasn't a professional stripper, she was just an almost-30 year old lifeguard with a self-esteem problem and a 1998 head injury.

garrrrrrrblarrrrrrr

this is so not my deal usually (tweeness? the french? i mean, really), but the herman dune video does make me smile. I think it's the inclusion of animated alphabetics that gets right in the ol' blood pumper.

Oh god, do I need to get out of here. I am so sick of indoors and proper clothes and pollen and recycled office air. I can't even sit in my chair, I'm all toddler-slouchy and ADD and have a ton of work and am not motivated to do anything and HEY LOOK INTERNET CONNECTION.


beach in t-minus 2 days.

awesome

so catherine and I are shopping for bathing suits online. it's probably okay for me to buy a used Bud Light themed one-piece on Ebay from a seller named "chiggerville", right?


I thought so. Sold!

"Throw your clothes on the floor/ I'm gonna take my clothes off too!"

Eagle-eyed Girl on the Street S. IM's yrs truly the Birchmere July schedule.

I missed PM Dawn, so.... SWEET MUSICAL REDEMPTION! Check on the 22nd. For the low, low price of 50 duckets.



My best BIIM story:

Scene: high school, Homecoming dance. I am in the middle of a v. dramatic semi-reunion with a boyfriend who cheated on me with a skirt named Sheryl, she of the giantest blonde Texas cheerleader 'do I have ever seen, like 5x the size of mine. Also a giant rack. Anyblahs, said boyfriend requests DJ to play "Please Forgive Me" by Bryan Adams and dedicate to me. Instead, the DJ plays "I'll Make Love to You" by Boyz II Men. And dedicates it to me.

Awesome?

Hen Wen

While I certainly remember reading books as a child (tween/preteen/whatever comes before freshman English class and Tess of the D’Urbervilles), I’m not sure why I chose the books I did. I recall going to the school and public libraries but I have no conscience memory about what motivated me toward my selections. Nowadays, I just grab whatever’s nearby or at the airport’s Hudson News or is about zombies. But what invisible hand was guiding my decisions back then? I’m guessing it was either a kindly old lesbian librarian or the wicked Scholastic Books marketing devilkin.

A quick survey of friends and family has me leaning toward the idea that as books readers we are all embarrassingly lazy and will read whatever is placed closest to the door, propped open on its end with a dynamic shiny cover. Tek War, ahem.

So Lord knows why I was drawn to the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander around age 11. And while I don’t exactly remember what happened in terms of characters (magic pig) and plot* (quest for magic pig), I do recall thinking the series was the greatest literary accomplishment since The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. It also had nearly invincible zombie warriors in it.

I was therefore saddened to read that Alexander died last week at the age of 83. Here was a man whose writings slyly nudged my current literary tastes toward the world of fantasy but no so much that I’m one of those weirdoes that read fantasy novels. Well played, Mr. Alexander. And thanks.


* Wikipedia reveals that the plot was a crazy-assed one. Also, the other series I enjoyed as a yearling was the Dark Is Rising which they are turning into a movie, apparently. It’s also apparent that writers of children’s fantasy are required to have all their characters with magical powers to get on a ship and sail away to an elf world at the end of the final book. It’s called the Elrond Halfelven Dictate.

editorial note

yes, i used the non-word "chillax" twice in the last post.


suck it.

midnight in the garden of good and violin

so Andrew Bird is pretty fantastic, right? think jeff buckley with a serious whistling skill. and a violin. and guitar. And some serious early-college summer SNZ flashbacks. and a sock monkey. and other awesome things.

The N would like to register a hearty "shut the hell up" to the girls standing behind us, who began bitching as soon as AB started over a few times on a particular song. "God, enough already. Lets just pick up where you left off." Okay, ladies, ladies. You obviously didn't grasp what he was doing up there, with the whole recording and playing back thing. So see, like, if he "godkeptgoingalreadyjeezthisissoannoying" it would have meant that mistake would loop through the entire song. So chillax. Go get a beer or something. By n by, yr forever 21 top is hideous. And yes, I know where it's from.

On a good note: there was a lot of short people there, so even in the way back I had a great view.

To review: Andrew Bird last night was great and you should have been there. A quick note to the crowd from the G: STOP GOING ON FIRST DATES TO CONCERTS. Jesus, people.

Oh, also as we were leaving the N inadvertantly pissed off some poor local lead singer by not taking his free CD. Dude, chillax. Here is how you start a fanbase: by not flippin yr shit when someone doesnt take a free CD.

* * *

i'd try to talk about my week/weekend beyond that, but frankly, i'm exhausted. i don't know how you yng whippersnappers even do it. There was baseball and parties and drinking and tailgating and girly things and visitors and a sleepover where K and I tried to explain the concept of "what not to wear" to my mom. Long story.

DIE DIE DIE

todays blog message is brought to you by the Mockingbird, who is in his very last moments of life.

In other news, I am on hiatus until Monday. If I win Bird War, I will return. maybe.

I got a Honda that jingle jangle jingles

The G’s little grey motor coach developed a sexy new rattle a few weeks back, so we did what responsible car owners do and flat out ignored it. Flat out. When you turned the engine over you were treated to the distinct sound of metal jangling against other looser metal followed moments later by my darling wife going “Siiiggghhh. Will we ever own nice things? Ever? Siigghh.”

Well, good news my child bride! I was driving around this morning, felt a loud banging under my feet and saw this pirouetting in the middle of a Route 7 intersection.



Problem solved! The rattling ceased immediately. And the car didn’t crash or catch on fire or fall apart like a scene in a madcap 70’s road comedy starring Tim Conway.

Now, the only concern is that the one guy on our softball team who actually knows something about cars saw this picture and said we should probably get it fixed immediately or the car’s “suspension” may fall off the car’s “frame.” But he also adds that it should take about 20 minutes and I could do it myself with $4 worth of parts from the Home Despot.

Yeah! Project.

Anybody need a ride home?

I'm tired of Lohan anyway

Hey hey! Congrats to Tommy for making the Posts Express blog thing two out three days this week. Will Manifest Density become the new Superficial? The go-to website for lazy Express editors? I think it might.

CHRIST ALMIGHTY

the problem with working in an office of v. few is that when your day goes wrong, there is only a select handful of folks that can then bear the brunt of my insane wrath re: all things career. So hey there, spousal unit! Sorry I almost kung-fu kicked you right off the Memorial Bridge with my raging tiny feminine fists of steel tin foil n tears!

In other better news, I went and bought the most decadent dinner ever because of my insanely good mood: strawberry lemonade, brie, and chocolate-covered blueberries. Apparently when yrs truly has a bad day at work she magically transforms into Marie Antoinette. If MA were big into sulking and watching marathons of Miami Ink. (Oh lordy, speaking of. Remind me to tell you something about that sometime soon.)



my god I need vacation, stat. who wants to go to chicago in june.

``I Do Believe We're Naked'' by Funky See Funky Do

Do the premiere cable channels still have their free trial weeks on occasion? Is HBO doing one now? We seem to be getting it for free. Someone call my dad to make sure he knows so he can record every movie on Betamax. They can go into the water damaged cardboard box with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Flight of the Navigator, Little Shop of Horrors, Short Circuit, Stand By Me, Star Trek IV, The Karate Kid Part II, Three Amigos, Crocodile Dundee, Hoosiers, The Care Bears Movie, Great Mouse Detective, Howard the Duck, Money Pit, The Black Cauldron, King Solomon's Mines, The Legend of Billie Jean, Cocoon, and Witness. It’s in the basement next to old storm windows.

====

Also, I never got into early 00’s Japanese horror film revival and know nothing of films like The Grudge or The Ring. But HBO played The Ring yesterday and I watched it with the sound off. For those who have never seen it (wife) here’s what I think happens based on not hearing the dialogue:

Naomi Watts really hates this old home video so she burns it in a barrel like a hobo. The fumes from the plastic cause her son to get sick (possibly hypothermia) and also attacked by a herd of 20 male deer. To help her son, Watts goes to the mental hospital that Sarah Connors broke of in T2 but her cell now only has books and an old TV and Sissy Spacek in it. Apparently, this doesn’t help so she goes home. In the meantime, the kid's doctor, who’s played by Wilma from the Flintstones movie, kills herself and the boy leaves the hospital where he’s been living. He goes home and kills the guy who played the young bisexual actor in LA Confidential by stretching his mouth open like Alec Baldwin in Beetlejuice. Watts finds the body in a pickup truck but leaves it there to go make her son a poisonous peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She then drowns him in the bath tub until a little girl comes of his mouth. This causes the TV to come on, so Watts goes inside of it and then falls into a well. She climbs out when a monkey in dress starts chasing her but she is able to trap it by pushing a 1000 lbs rock on top of the well. She then wanders around the forest from Cider House Rules until she come to a cliff and jumps off. The end.

This may not have been the way the script reads but it’s what the movie looked like and would probably have made a better one. And if you think that was confusing, you should have heard me try to explain the Battlestar Galactopus mini-series to the G last night so she could understand the first episode on DVD. She got angry and said she was going to bed even though I was only halfway done. It was 8:30.

Update: It turns out I was watching the Ring 2.

advice, travel

listen, when yr wife demands a dirndl as a souvenir, just you know - for shits and giggles, to wear around the house or to a bar or a barbeque or whatever, it's probably in your best interest to just buy her one. Trust me on this. You'll probably be thankful. I'm sure there are lots more "slutty costume options" than "authentic peasant options" nowadays.


...


if you dont' know what it is, look it up.

Close, but no, not the Jewish spinny top. That's dreidel.

nonblawg/you taste like a burger

Please to be reading before you ask anyone to "throw together" a bridal shower/birthday party/baby shower/wedding invitation for you.

"GrrrrlySwrlz Swash Bold Italic" or whatever? Decidedly UN-AWESOME.

* * *

Hi. I am swamped. I am not talking to Blog this week, or at least I don't think I will be. Stay tuned for The N's gripping tales of... whatever he talks about lately. Beowulf, magic, women's fashion gone awry, how much his wife sweats Paul Rudd. Etc.

Website comes to our house, listens to our conversations, turns them in to funny and better written posts.

Since we can’t be bothered to write anything about anything we will just rely on this to tell you exactly how we feel. Really, exactly exact.

Except maybe for Gosling. There’s never been much heat for him by either of us. I would happily bed anyone else, though. Especially Bale.

If you're small and on a search

In the brief history of human/marsupial relations, how many people do you think have kicked a living opossum? Not in a Mark Mosley sort of way but more of a “be gone you nasty rat thing and spoil my lawn no more” kinda of way. Or both maybe. Either way, I presume I have joined a very small union of people who have accomplished this feat. And like riding on Air Force One or going under the North Pole in a submarine, I expect receive a certificate from the navy shortly.

In other fuzzy animal news, my cell phone is no more. The antenna was made out of a sheet metal screw and duct tape. And the dog puncture-chewed the speaker so you couldn’t hear any high frequency audio. If somebody got excited or had a particularly squeaky voice, the sound would drop out. I missed several calls from Jane Wiedlin.

This is considered animal news because the display screen options on the phone were limited to pictures of nature, swaths of primary colors or a toggling set of assertively adorable animal photos. Behold:



This was, of course, the background option I chose because I’m a 37 year-old admin assistant in Cedar Rapids and my glasses are on a jeweled chain and there is cat hair on my sweater and I wear ill-fitting bras. So, I was especially distraught when the phone needed to be retired and puppy-bunny-kitty had to go. Ahhh, puppy-bunny. He can has mah cheezburger.

I tried to get animal photos to transfer to my new phone but Verizon and LG would have nothing of it. They will live on forever now on the internets.

This is the first picture I took with my new camera phone, a luxury that has quickly been abused.



It’s a vending machine that sells individual beers at a nursing home bowling alley. It is awesome and I need one near my house or the dog park.

This is the second picture I took. It’s the pornographic cake from the first Dismemberment Plan show. Or it was. Behold the ravages of age and indie sugar fury.



Puppybunny is dead. Long live puppybunny.

my name is earl... sinclair.

oh my awesome friday morning:

one.

two. I had completely forgotten about the existence of this show until last night when we saw a commercial for the DVDs. And "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" is still not out? Son of a bitch.

three. *








* this will become relevant later on in the life of this blog, I promise.

ugh for serious tho

Dear Heather,

I concur. THE EMPIRE WAIST TREND CANNOT DIE FAST ENOUGH.

Love,
The World

* * *

Thanks for making me look like an idiot, fashion assholes. Also, again just a simple kind reminder: stop making clothes with skulls on them. Unless it is Misfits merch.

Thanks.

morning commute, chapter 22

The N: (under breath): I wish I could date a computer model.
The G: what?
The N: nothing.
The G: I heard you. You said you wish you could date a computer model. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does this mean like, a Barker's Beauty demonstrating a computer (does Vanna-Whitesque hand motion) or like, a.... (blanking on computers) ... Tandy?
The N: Tandys are too old.
The G: Tandys are the cougars of personal computers! So what then? Mac?
The N: Too many tattoos.
The G: Dell? ... No, not a Dell. Dell's are square.
The N: Yeah, but Dell's aren't that old.
The G: But they are boring, right?
The N: I guess so. Dell's are like the girl when you find out she isn't Mormon, you're all "Really?? Not at all? Huh." *




* an aside: 90% of the Mormons I personally know are EPICALLY un-boring.

total aside

I defend my right to like Glaceau (which I know is pronounced like: "glah-so" [thanks HS french!!!] but which yes, I insist on pronouncing "glack-cow!!!!!!", kind of like, "ker-PLOW!!!!") SmartWater simply because of the packaging; the shape of the skinny bottle fits perfectly in my tiny little Harry Potter hands.


...


here ends yr corporate shillin.

no seriously guys, virginia is teh suxx and i hate it and never go there cause i hate it SO MUCH and fuck rosslyn too WOOOOOT backwards hicks!!!1

Obama spoke in Richmond last night. (also - so wait - was Kaine the first governor to endorse him????? am I wrong on that?)

Think of what we could do with the $265 million a day we are spending in Iraq -- right here in Richmond ," the first-term senator continued. "Think of the schools we could build and the roads and the bridges and the hospitals. We need to bring to a close this sad chapter in American history, and begin a chapter that passes the might of our military to the freedom of our diplomacy and the power of our alliances. And while we are at it, we can close down Guantanamo and we can restore habeas corpus and we can lead with our ideas and our values," he said emphatically.

pig

if you haven't been reading Chris Onstad's "Bacon Chronicles" then you have been missing out on some of the best blogging that exists.

but not since you left, have the waves come

1. "Oh!" said I, and then i remembered this....

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

... and now I don't care.

2. It is not unusual to be achingly tempted by a big giant obvious bright-as-a-thousand-suns job opportunity in a really shitty faraway rural town, a town I would learn to hate/resent in like: 8 days time, but a job that is still simply screaming for me to apply? The answer is yes, it is unusual. But I mean. I'm not gonna do it. I don't think.

3. Last night we had hot dogs and pudding snackpaks for dinner, and today is our anniversary. i would write something sappy and romantic here, but instead: Hahahahahha. SUCKER.

The Noid

I guess I could look up the ad agency that’s producing the latest series of Domino’s Pizza commercials but let’s keep this impersonal and just say they are doing a terribly poor job. They make want to eat the frozen $4.99 pizzas from Safeway with the crusts made from cardboard and the watery tomato sauce that doesn’t come from the fancy glass jars but the big metal cans with the cheap paper yellow label and the big tomato stamped on them. You will remember them from camp or your grandmother’s neighbor’s house.

Exhibit 1 – The one where a big piece of furry fudge comes to the front door and gets chocolate all over a little girl and ruins her pretty outfit.

Exhibit 2 – The one where three roommates sit around a steaming pizza and praise it based on their own exaggerated and disturbing facial features.

Exhibit 3 – The most recent one where two guys discuss their gross cookie based facial hair after eating an Oreo Dessert Pizza.

None of these make me want to order from Domino’s. Two of them make the G dry heave. And the last one ruined my lunch today because the Queen’s hat looks like a giant Oreo Dessert Pizza and it made me gag on the butterscotch Handi Snack I brought in because I was Mondays make me feel blue.


I took two pictures of TV when the queen was visiting the WH. In the first one you can see the hat clearly. The one above is all blurry but it makes it look like the Prez is about to chow down on some delicious Oreo dessert hat.

She can find quarters behind my ear/And make me laugh, one two one two

i am gonna spend my entire day watching old "30 rocks" and trying to figure out a way to blog a story from friday night. it's hard when the bulk of the tale involves hand gestures and me breaking down in hysterics.

really, it's taken me over 48 hours to calm down enough to even tell this stupid thing in person.

* * *

hey, remember house parties?

(girl jiggles doorknob of questionable basement bathroom)
K: um, i think someone's in there.
Girl: was it a guy?
K: yeah.
(girl jiggles doorknob more insistently)

HOORAY, POORLY EXECUTED BATHROOM HOOKUP!

Looking for other explanations

Stargate SVU, or whatever the show with MacGyver is called, is a show I’ve always considered one of the dimmer stars in the TV/movie sci-fi constellation. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire show. The only time I’ve watched some of any single episode is when the G makes me clean the room where the dog sleeps and the TV in there doesn’t have cable. Golf or pro basketball or Stargate? So I try Stargate even though it’s always confusing and that one giant guy has a medallion on his head in some episodes but not in others and sometimes they are underwater and every planet they go to only has peasants on it. Also, Beau Bridges is on it for some reason.

Can anyone like that show enough that they would honor their fandom on their license plate? I may be way off base here but that’s all I could assume when we saw “STG8 LVR” on some dude's car this week.

Any other suggestions on what it may be?

and for my next trick, i turn a handkerchief into a dove

so far this morning I've had a lengthy IM conversation about whether Paula Deen's sons might be in the Klan, consolidated all my saved/favorite phone text messages from the past year into a single Word file (hi. i am drunk at bar pilar. ps who is the bad guy from strawberry shortcake???? purple pieman, right?) and drank myself 3 cups of coffee. HAPPY FRIDAY.

"this is where the magic the gathering happens"

Defenders of Stan Episode 7.

parking, jesus.

When I was a very small boy, very small boys came and drank with me. On several youthful Thursdays, before the G rescued me to a world away from the Clarendon Metro stop, I could be found sitting outside the Dupont Front Page with an entire bucket of Coronas sweating in my lap. After I had consumed several of these, I would retire down to the bathroom and wait in line to do what it is that people do when they retire to a stank bathroom.

On one such occasion, while washing my hands, a young man burst in, saw all the toilets were occupied, huffed and did the desperate pee-pee dance. Frustrated by the lack of free urinals, he quickly loosened his ribbon belt and chino dress pant and relieved himself into the begrimed floor drain.

I have never returned.

In the proceeding years, the bar’s proprietors discovered that they owned more framed copies of the New York Posts than they had wall space for and they opened another location in Ballston. I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection that the two were related but last night I was tricked into going to the one in Arlington.

The cover band played "Undone" and clearly no one there knew it. Same with Rusted Root. Come on, anybody? "Cat Turned Blue?" I felt old. Especially when I saw some kids I was an RA for. But then I calculated that even they were too old to be there so I just felt bad for them. Their baseball caps were very white.

Like its sister bar, the bathrooms are not adequate for the Miller Lite-filled masses. But in Virginia, no one pees on the floor.

bzzness

- THE LEGEND OF HOGZILLA

- "He also praised an Alex Rodriguez home run by saying it 'traveled as far as the railroad featured so prominently in Anna Karenina,' and referred to LeBron James as 'LeVronsky' in an apparent nod to the heroine's lover."

- oh man, joke/skits on mixes. Those were the days. I think I put "Gordon's Answering Machine Message" on at least 800 tapes I made for people. Ugh. I apologize.

* * *

On the drive in, we started talking about what a bee most likely cranks up on his Ipod as he takes one last long, lingering look at the hive he's about to abandon. Honestly, I'm not terribly worried about the bees. They're disappearing, not dying, right? That's what Bee Lady on NPR said. Poof, gone. Probably they're all just moving to California for the next 10 years to write screenplays; they'll be back for their HS reunions, just the right time to for a chilly-yet-romantic homecoming run-in with the Girl Bee that Got Away/ Got Left Behind on Prom Night.

Anyways. That Guided by Voices album, sure. Jesus n Mary Chain's Just Like Honey (whoa Scarjo. just... whoa), maybe that one Joseph Arthur song, also Tupelo Honey.. The N suggests Blind Melon's No Rain (ba dum dum, ching). Anything I'm forgetting? The Bee Gees? The Hives?

california uber alles

MJ's deep thoughts on the melting of cali highways:

After earthquakes, tsunamis, brush fires, terrorism, the world turning into one giant Gap, runaway trolley cars, decks collapsing, sea lion attacks, seagull attacks, bouncy colorful ball attacks, bike messengers, and the Stephen Colbert-like idea of California falling off into the ocean due to its sinful ways, this is probably my biggest fear about San Francisco.

dude you forgot surfers.

Something meaty this way comes - part 1

Not being part of the BSWW, I haven’t really been part of this whole meatcake conversation. (Actually, I really haven’t been part of any conversation of late because of this despicable sinus issue and when people talk at me I usually just nod and laugh when they laugh since I can’t hear a rutting word.) K and the G have launched several weak verbal lobs at each other, both happily strutting around telling each other what’s what and bragging on whose kitchen acumen is most suited for loafing meat. When I did show interest in participating, I was quickly informed that I would be regulated to number 2 and my help would be appreciated but here’s a kiss on the cheek for being so cute and can you walk the dog?.

Well, I’m nobody’s Jonathan Frakes. Especially since every time I asked about when this cook-off was going to take place I got either a new answer or a shifting timetable with no promise of benchmarks. It was supposed to go down on Tuesday but of course all the “main” participants are too busy with writing something or IMing about fleecy pullovers.

I knew this would happen. If you want to copy some large, purposeless and public internet-meat-based phenomenon, you best do it yourself. My plan was hatched at the DPlan show when the participants in this spectacle were beginning to get wishy-washy on the details. Fine, I said to myself, while the rest of you cats hem and haw and go see the Wrens on Saturday, I’m going to get off the pot and make myself some meatcakes.

First things first - a recipe. Fortunately, a kickass recipe has been handed down through the Pyggy lines since Grendel’s time and I have my mother’s hand-written copy above the microwave. Actually, the entire cookbook is handwritten (probably about 250 recipes) but often features unforgivable mistakes throughout (sugar cookie recipe lacks sugar as ingredient) and each one is punctuated with the name of the author. The meat loaf entry was one of several scribed by my mother but it’s the only one where she includes her maiden name. I assume it’s meant to remind the world that this recipe is from her family and was dreamt up before she was saddled with her new and horrible last name.

Second things second – I needed a spouseless house. This experiment is the G’s baby and if I wanted to ruin it out of spite it needed to be conducted in secret, away from the prying eyes of my wife and her internet minions. On Saturday, she and CA were off to see kids with sunburns and sockless loafers fight each other at the Tombs. But she Would. Not. Leave. I kept suggesting she head out early on account of bad parking or burning libraries or pink polos or whatever other hazards would slow her roll on M Street.

Finally, she left and I did that thing where you crack all your knuckles at once and laughed evilly. Meatcake is GO!

Okay. Here are my observations for anyone trying to, eventually, follow in my footsteps. Keep in mind that I never actually read any of the other websites that proceeded in this experiment before me. There is probably a “right” way to do this. The following, probably, isn’t.

• Buying the ingredients of Staurday night at 8pm makes you look like the saddest bachelor in the history of sad-sack losers. My recipe was for a single loaf and I estimated that I needed about 2.5 times those ingredients. That meant about 4 pounds of hamburger meat, five cups of grated cheese, several eggs, milk and 4 cups of corn flakes. No fruit, no vegetables, no folic acid - nothing that anyone would ever claim could be a healthy meal for a woman. Plus, I bought hair gel.

• Meatcake is not cheap. I spent $40+ on the ingredients.

• Quick – how much un-grated cheese equals 5 cups of grated? No one will ever know, except me. And I'm not giving up any of my secrets, only to say that there are two bricks of cheese in our fridge if you need to reinforce your patio or if you have an enemy who is lactose intolerant.

• Safeway brand cornflakes are some irregular-assed shaped cornflakes.

• Cooking any meat loaf, in general, requires making a huge mess. Making it on this grand of a scale meant an ever larger kitchen wide disaster. My advice is to get a dog as they love all meatloaf ingredients that land on the floor except Worcestershire sauce.

• Worcestershire sauce is the most outrageously named condiment sold as a generic supermarket food stuff. And things that runny should not be called sauce. From now on it shall be referred to as English Juice, like they do in Brazil.

Coming soon – the actual "cake" cooking and wobbly construction. Stay tuned, you lazy bloggers.

yawn city

-- Two things about this:

1. Parade magazine is online?

2. Real life imitates How I Met Your Mother plotline, sort of, only much cooler? Yes, I watched it on Monday night, even though I swore to never watch it again.

It's been a giant family joke since, well, forever, that I am adopted. And my real family is not only blonde, but very very rich. Probably my real family has a room in their mansion dedicated to giftwrapping. Fuck it, according to my mother, I'm a Spelling.

Where was I.

Oh yeah! Yr dad's on the A-Team????? Dude. Nice.

-- In other news:

Let's just call it was it really is: "Boundary Street Writers Workshop" now officially redubbed "Fake-Angry Drunk Fighting Workshop." (now with even more smoke breaks!)

-- In continuing Dplan coverage:

get rich!

all i ever say now

dplan review @ pfork.

No, i'm not done talking about it.

ALSO:: Kanishka alerted me to the fact that I am an unapologetic plagiarist w/r/t blog entry titles. Oops. Consider this carefully retitled: "the fatgirl keeps onward!" Or even better: "One too many blows to the head."

girly mag

i don't know jack shit about fashion, but I do know that when ol' whats-her-name Levy states someday she'd sell her wedding dress, I about want to cry. If I looked like that, in a dress like that, I'd wear that son of a bitch to the OFFICE everyday. Mark my words. I'd errand it up - paying bills at home, post office, bank, dry cleaning. I'd be the hottest cube drone this city'd ever see. Like the episode when Marge gets a Chanel suit and keeps repurposing it.