I swear to God, I kind of wish I made this up, or I could tell you that this was the result of my last drawing class of the semester (which was last night, which means my weeknight drinking habit? Back on! Summer camp has officially ended!) But I did not. Welcome to my hometown newspaper.
- - -
Totally related: S: Loudoun is a sitcom. Complete with wacky politically charged teachers who end up on myspace; wannabe bikini models who's bestest years ever were high school and plan on reliving those years forever; and the people that watch and judge from far away. like looking into an ant farm. What if, in Sterling, this all makes sense. How crazy would that be?
The G: Bwa hahahahaha. Omgz, we're in the cage looking out, not the other way around? META. Okay, not really, but still.
- - -
P.S. And S. chimes in some more: "What happened to robbing convenience stores? AND this dude is 5'4? He shouldn't be too hard to find. How many guys are that short? 'APB: pixie man-boy robs hobby town. news and stache classification at 11.'"
Somewhere in there there is a joke about robbing a hobby shop for a miniature house to live in, or perhaps tiny tiny fake monopoly money, (or a pony to ride away on!) but S. can't figure it out yet. She's promised to get back to me when the best joke surfaces.*
If you are going to reference the fact that you are very awesome, and hang out with music legends on a regular basis, that's fine. Sure, i'm jealous. However. When you reference said rock stars, please reference them correctly in the context of music history. A small thing, I know, but please... I beg of you.
It's like sending me an email saying "OMG you know who I did a keg stand with last night????? Thurston Moore! Yes, THAT Thurston Moore! Of the Dim Stars?????? I told him I was a huge fan of the Dim Stars."
If we're going to go with a new fashion trend, let us all consider just, like, HEADS. But still with flesh. And oozing blood. Etc. All before being picked clean.
Same with pirates. Pirates, I am done with you. Shut up.
* * *
Also re: fashion, don't even get me started on a "vintage-style apron" website the D and I have been discussing this afternoon. I can't even link to it, because the language used is just that weird.
We sat around and ate turkey burgers and cheese plates, and covered ourselves in bug spray that smelled just like S. Shortcake burps (plastic + synthetic fruit smell made in a lab), and then we gathered around the laptop and watched a Bragg's newest hilarious online-series-thing, The Defenders of Stan. I highly recommend. The N. would recommend also, but he's too busy being mopey about not getting a chance to wear tights and play with the other boys.
And if you have more time:
- 28 Day Slater - Jesus Christ Supercop - Channel 101's Yacht Rock (which I know I've linked to like, 8 times before, because I love it so.)
Actually, we never got to JC Supercop, so I've made up for that omission by watching it all morning. I could/should write something here about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but have you seen the video yet of the kid who can solve a Rubik's Cube one-hand in 20.9 seconds?
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article on Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Slide Rulers filed me with the kind of conflicted emotion that only long, compounded German words can accurately describe. The idea of those nerdlingers getting conked on the head with ceiling tiles is a tiny bit appealing to me, but at the same time the decrepit state of our area public(ish) schools is a disgrace.
Although I have never been inside the esteemed institution, I did drive around the outside of it once looking for an unguarded dumpster to toss our old demolished kitchen cabinets. The exterior did not have the sweeping glass and steel architecture I imagined the nations finest public school should have. Or the giant Smelloscope or detached generators to power the rebigulators. According to the article, (you need a password to read it online) they can’t even afford to fix the roof so water doesn’t destroy their super computer. Sounds like I could have dumped my old cabinets in the front lobby and nobody would have notice.
Truth be told, though, I have no ill beef with the current class of over-achievers who apparently “have had mice crawl up” their “leg and arm.” Back when I was a youngster, TJ was that jerk school who always had 1000 kids at the VJAS science expo and smoked us regular kids with our baking soda/vinegar volcanoes. They used words like “catalyst.”
And while their athletics teams didn’t excel as well their Mathletics teams, they did do well in the sports I played. I assume their crew team won because they were able to master the physics involved with rowing and were just more efficient. But the real irritability I have toward that school is based on a football game that was played over ten years ago.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, two white bread schools faced off on a parched field in Northern Virginia. Being mostly slow, over-educated rich kids, the score remained nil-nil late into the fourth. With five minutes to go, a young DE you now know as the Nabob blocked a punt out of the back of the end zone resulting in a safety and a 2-0 lead. With time running out, TJ lined up for a long, game winning field goal. The stands erupted as it sailed wide. But luck was with those nerds that day. There on the brown grass was a yellow flag. Off-sides on the defense. The aim on the second, closer kick was true.
The final score of 3-2 was some sort of Virginia high school football record in futility but I can’t remember which one. I do remember the name of their place kicker, though, and whenever I meet someone who went to TJ I curse him.
So maybe I am a little glad that there is mold in the classrooms that gives everyone asthma. Maybe the next generation of student athletes will find their kicks fall just a bit short.
Here is where i use my blog to rant about the price of flea medication.
It is a good damn thing BD is too stupid to go to college, because we seriously couldn't afford it.
* * *
In a completely unrelated line of questioning: how smart do you think it is to have 20 people staying in a single house for a weekend, even if you love these people a lot? Will someone kill another someone? (yes/no) I kind of already have hives about it. New England: I apologize.
Oh and we didn't watch the bridge blow up last night, because we made waffles and fell asleep. WHOOPS.
- My mom went to her 40th high school reunion on Saturday. I went over to my folks house; sat and watched her and her friend from out of town (blousy, bawdy, boob job, kind of drunk, kept calling my dad "Jim") getting ready for the big night. It was as if I were 8 years old again and might then go try on her high heels when she left the house. They were, in a word--> cutediculous? The whole shebang has given my Ma this crazy high, occasionally seen after a few glasses of wine but something I hadn't really witnessed in a while. I'm pretty sure the high came from knowing she'd be the best looking one there, and still skinny; and my father chose to stay at home wand work on his football draft, therefore she could drink and dance with her 1965 prom date, who is a poet with great hair.
- (Seriously, Pat, eat a fat one. There is no need to get ALL CAPS EMAILS on me.)
- We are going to watch/witness the bridge meltdown/blow up tonight. Midnight! That is late for a curmudgeonly old bag like myself! But I don't think I could pass up watching metal melt into itself, and crumble in a big heap. I'm kind of disappointed it''s not the whole thing, just a part of it, and over land, too? Lame. I wanted some sort of giant sploosh. I'd assume you'd be able to watch all this from Jones Point park, even though the parking will be off limits? Time to conduct some internet research. (If you don't think some 15 year old has already set up a message board with instructions on how to sneak past security, then you have no faith in America's youth.)
Somehow I've gotten deeply entangled with a little, evil problem I like to call "webhosting", which is just riding my ass.
When I was but I wee lassie, I dropped out of a class called "3-D Modeling", straight up computer science disguised as some sort of art (lies). I made enough of a stink that they A) let me substitue some other ridiculous class like papermaking or soemthing and B) dropped it from the program curriculum the following year - let's hear it for people who throw bitchfits in the department head's office! Admit it, world: you need people like us.
I have, however, enjoyed using the word "CHMOD" several times this morning, mostly in IM's to my smart friends, like "WHY THE BLOODY HELL CAN'T I EDIT THE CHMOD AND WHAT THE HELL IS A CHMOD ANYWAY?"
pop quiz: How is it possible that one person can love Erasure and yet hate the Scissor Sisters with such an unbridled passion? And by "one person," I mean me?
I've been trying to force some love into my icy, coal-dust-encrusted musicial heart. I got onto Hype Machine, and started listening to the Sisters. More than 1 song, even. Start to finish. And this is what my brain conjured:
But in my head, the monkey is also smashing a synthesizer with a ball peen hammer.
Fuck it, I'm not apologizing. I TRIED. How can you listen to this, internet.
* * *
- If you thought i posted this entry just to use the Cowboy Dog-Riding Monkey, you are about 89% correct. the other 11% goes to my seething re: the Scissor Sisters.
- No, I'm not going to see Shellac, but if you run into SA as he's skulking out of the mens room or something, make sure you plant a wet sloppy one on him for me.
"How long will it take for people to forget Pluto? Not as long as it's still a name walking around Disney World, waiting to get punched in the nuts, I guess."
Wow, the royal we has kind of been crapping all over the place, Internets, haven't we? We're sorry. This page used to be so clean, so bright, so crisp and white.
I am currently experience the sleep deprivation situation that one often faced in college. The kind where you would look at a calendar and think “I might be able to get a good night’s sleep in 12 days but until then I should not operate heavy keg-a-rator machinery.” A recap at what has currently put me in this Z deficit.
Thursday: Linda Cropp and Rancid. You’ve heard SingSyl’s superior tale of his run in with Cropp but it was my time at the Black Cat that killed me. The past few years of Sigur Ros and Iron & Wine has withered all the pseudo-violent tendencies I once exhibited at college rock shows. But its good to see the kids still enjoy flailing themselves around.
Specifically the three identically dressed brothers who were equally aggressive in their pushing of people to the floor and helping them back up. And they also had a striking resemblance to Max Perlich. (Who I remember most from the Naked Eyes video.)
In bed at 2, up at 6:30.
Friday: Bachelor Party. We can’t talk about that beyond the guy who had no business staying in with his A-9 off suit. That guy sucks.
In bed at 2, up at 6:30.
Saturday: Drove to Richmond for some beer drinking and a fantasy football draft. While we, of course, stayed up to late, devoured horrible things, learned that one of our friend’s great-great-grandfather was court marshaled by the Confederates during the Civil War for “horse buggery,” and that others went to high school with that stripper who had the human hand at her house, it should not have been enough to cripple my weekend. While my friendship with these clowns is very dear, most of them are monstrous, muumuu wearing fat-asses and I wanted to shove their special dialing wands through their deviated septums to kill their unimaginably load snoring.
Now, my father has snored all my life and it never fazed me growing up. When these first brief snorts began, I laughed ‘em off. But within minutes, three of these tubs were roaring away at Oceanic 815/magnetic impulse levels. I tried escaping into another room and then another floor but it didn’t work. Richmond shook more that night than it did during the Petersburg seize and explosion. (See the beginning of Cold Mountain.) At times it seemed that they were recreating the Lincoln-Douglas debates through a series of snorts and grunts.
Take a listen yourself…
Asleep as 3:30, up 8.
Sunday: The plan was too drive home early and sleep the afternoon away. But the Virginia DOT, several caravans of returning vacationers and college kids on their way back to school kyboshed that plan. The 2 hour trip took 5, even with several attempts bypass on Route 1. Luckily, I had this kid to keep me company for at least an hour.
And to the cutie pie with the skeleton leg in the back of her car: call me.
When I finally made it home I was put to work in the salt mines and painted to 2am or something.
Monday: Okay, I did sleep until 1pm on Monday, but I paid for it later. My sleep pattern was so screwed up that I couldn’t fall asleep until 3am. That, and the discovery that my local library let’s you check out graphic novels. Nerd alert: high. They have all the Marvel Ultimate series so I did stay up too late reading about the new Colossus.
Asleep at 3, up at 7:30.
Tuesday: SNAKES! By myself. It's not a good sign for this flick when there were only 5 of us total in the theatre. And three of us were weirdos sitting solo. This movie’s got legs, I tells ya!
Last Night: Normal. Except for the humiliating 9-1 soccer loss.
However, I am still very sleepy. Current proof:
A sporadic tic near my eye.
My right thumb spasms like that clay guy in that one Tool video.
A sophisticated Zummi Gummi speak where either the first letter of words get reversed or entire words in the sentences.
In coherent mumbling
Inability to come up with blog ideas.
It took 4 days to write this one entry.
The mumbling has turned out to be the most fun because the G can’t understand what I’m saying and reply’s “HUH?!?” in a very Britney-like way. And then we fight and she tells me to stop complaining and that I should go to bed early tonight. But what if something good is on tonight? Or I start another comic book?
- 6:30 pm - After work but before Summer Camp Arts-n-Crafts class, I stop at my neighborhood Rite Aid. In the parking lot, a Corvette (gold) pulls up. The driver, a very shiny man bedecked in a tight white polo shirt (to show off his ARMULAR MUSCLES!!!!) and maybe green Zubaz (?) and definitely a gold chain. He steps out of the car and goes inside a store. A few minutes later he exits, smiles at the passenger in his Vette, grabs his crotch, and gets back into the car and drives away. The license plates? "GO2GUY."
- 7:30 pm - Annoying Lady is back in class. She spends the entire two hours loud-talking to herself about how she's fluent in Dutch and how she just got back from vacation in Las Vegas. The N suggests bringing in a handful of tumbleweed, and throwing it in her face.
- 10:02 pm- I accidentally laugh at South Park, which isn't funny, but involves a pimp-and-ho beating each other up. See? Not funny.
- 2:00-3:00 AM, approx - I have a dream I am working at a famous resort as a Brooke Shields impersonator, but I am very bad at it, seeing as I look nothing like Brooke Shields. But I continue to try and scam my way through this resort, and make big stinks when I do not get my way. Eventually I need to leave, and I ask the valet to bring my car around front. Also, I think I am using a stolen credit card maybe? Anyways, the hotel staff plays along with me, but I can tell they are rolling their eyes, and then they tell me to STAND IN THE CAB LINE WITH THE COMMONERS while they go get my Bentley (borrowed). And I throw a fit, and tell the desk lady I'm going to call my PR people. The desk lady, Katherine Helmond, does not give a shit, and I spend the entire time standing in the cab line sulking because nobody will believe that I'm famous.
- 8:45 AM - As the N and I drive into work, I witness a relatively well-coiffed woman, probs in her mid 50s, vomit a stream of what appears to be Country Time P ink Lemonade into a tree bed. When the light turns green, she smiles and crosses the street.
At the risk of this becoming some sort of sordid EXERCISE BLOG (risk level+ hovering at about .035%), I bring you S.'s latest internet treasure: the "Couch Potato to 5K" podcasts. Listening to it made me bleed from the ears, but just a little, so I think I'll be okay.
S: oh wow. there are podcasts that follow along with the couch to 5k running plan. weird
The G: really? dude, everything is podcast noawadays
S: yeah it's set to music and the guy tells you when to run and when to walk
The G: I've spent all morning listening to "this american life" streams. are they free?. i should download them. what kind of music?
S: not sure how crappy the music is though. the intro didn't give me many hints
The G: hmmmm. this is either genius, or a disaster. what's the link?
ack
help.
techno.
lots of GarageBand3.0 hot beats and/or CRYSTAL WATERS.
S: boooo
The G: i think it's crystal waters. actually, it's funny because it's overlaid with a serious WHITE DUDE VOICE telling you things like "okay, now it's time to run!"
S: hahahaha. rats. in theory it's a great idea
The G: totally. i need to record my own. it would have Jay Z & Beyonce and probably like, Mission UK, and me screaming over it all: "GET A MOVE ON FATASS, FREE POTATO CHIPS JUST AROUND THE CORNER."
Would someone care to explain to me why a certain dog, who, as far as we know, has NEVER BEEN IN A HOUSE WITH A DOORBELL, and therefore should not GRASP THE CONCEPT of a doorbell, continues to go apeshit and run to the front door in a panic every time the Old Spice Red Zone commercial comes on?
