So, this is where a post usually goes.
But there is no post tonight.
There was no post yesterday.
There will be a post soon.
It will be good.
I promise.
There are pictures and there will be words to go with those pictures when my brain can make better sense of words. But for now, just know that I have a bump on my head and I feel tipsy although I haven't had a drop to drink. Lawdy mercy.
So, I'm at home on a rainy gray Saturday. I have a cold. I just took some Dayquil. I need soup. Here that, interwebs? Send soup. Preferably wonton. Wonton is my chicken noodle soup of choice. I'm weird, ask anyone. Back to me having a cold. I don't feel well. My head's all fuzzy and I sneezed 42 times in a row last night and I sound like Stevie Nicks. Not in a good way. And I look bad. That's the worst part of a cold. My eyes are puffy and my hair looks like the morning after a bad night out at a disco circa 1977. This is not a good look. But my voice matches.
I've been playing on the interwebs all morning, trying to get motivated to write the ScrapFest newsletter (that has to actually make sense, so it's best I wait 'til I feel a little better). I went to the Google to look up the correlation between redheads and migraines, if there is one — but I didn't get that far — because I typed "redheads are" instead of "and" and lookie what popped up in the autocomplete.
Redheads Are Not The Freshest Produce In The Aisle is SO the title of my new book. That I haven't written. But that's okay.
By the way, I can tell you from personal experience that redheads are not aliens (well, not most of us. I'm talking to you, Nicole Kidman!), redheads are better, redheads are not descended from cats, redheads ARE going extinct, we're definitely trouble, more sensitive to pain, we are not alien-human hybrids, and we are not mutants. And most of that is true most of the time.
Woo-hoo! Project Runway's back and can I tell you how excited I am that Nina Garcia and Michael Kors will be judging each eppie? Love. They're back in New York. Love. Tim Gunn will not be standing uncomfortably on a beach in California, but back in Gotham where he belongs. Double love.
Let's start the show, shall we?
9pm Central, baby. Sizing up the contestants. Jeanne says she's "dorking out about being in New York." Honey, I would too. Ping Wu is a physical therapist and thinks that helps her as a designer. O-tay. LOVING Anthony Williams "it is hell being black and gay in the ghetto." He wants to be a gown designer for Miss Universe. Faux hawk Jay weighs 145lbs. I remember when I weighed 145lbs. That's an era I like to call 20 years ago. Jesse works at Disney World as FREAKING JACK SPARROW. Yeah, baby! He's a pirate everyday!
9:04: love the punk chick already, she collects vinyl just like moi.
9:05: they're reading the letter — TO THE ROOFTOP, BITCHES!
9:07: it's so good to see Tim back in New York. He looks great. Champagne!
9:08: Ben is a comic book guy. Okay then. Anna Marie has a little bitty face. What a doll.
9:09: Look at all that fabric. Gorgeous. The challenge: 3 minutes to gather fabric & back to the workroom. Emilio says "Tim says go and we are like fat people at a buffet in Vegas." Okay, Emilio, no need for that action.
9:11: commercial. Here are my initial thoughts: After watching six seasons of this show, a few "characters" stand out — obviously our Gay Boy From The South, Anthony. I think we'll see who has talent by the end of the show, but I hope there are some interesting challenges planned. Last season was plagued with "make a pretty dress-itis" and I couldn't care less who won by the end of the season. Back to the show!
9:16: oooo – the designers are getting notebook computers to sketch on. Neat. The dude with the star tattoo on his neck reminds me of Paul Westerburg from The Replacements. Jonathan has a cute Morrissey look going on with the hair and glasses. Cute boy. Enter the models!
9:19: one of the models is 5'11". She's an Amazon. Tim's critiquing. I want Tim to come help me assemble outfits in my closet everyday. Star-neck-tatt guy has the zipper showing as a design element and that is SO over. Ugh. Jeaneane is kind of in trouble. Anthony is making Tim laugh. Okay, this other guy in a gray v-neck wants to make a mermaid train — dear sweet mother of Ariel, stop it.
9:24: Jeneane is starting over completely. Poor girl.
9:29: This is going to be interesting. Ping Wu is something else, y'all. I haven't figured out what that is yet.
9:30: Tim is sending in the models. OMG. The weird guy that was in the gray v-neck is named Jesus. Oh, Jesus.
9:31: 5 minutes 'til the runway. Okay, Anthony is sewing his dress onto his model. That's never a good sign.
9:36: ya know what I find most interesting about the switch from Bravo to Lifetime? The commercials are SO very different on Lifetime. Centrum vitamins and Special K.
9:38: YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME. Nicole Richie is a judge?
9:39: some of these designers are smoking crack. For realz. Okay, I like Jay's – he may weigh what I did when I was 16, but boy can design an outfit.
9:41: Chrisiane's dress looks crazy. Amy's looks like a harlequin gift bag. Mila's dose nothing for me. Don't like the jacket at all. Anthony's is interesting. Maya's looks comfy — kinda like a pillow on the bust that you could take a nap on if you got a little sleepy.
9:43: highest and lowest scores — Michael Kors thinks Anthony's dress looks like he glued a couple of dresses together. C'mon, Kors! You can do better than that! Nina loves the guy who is not Paul Westerburg. Nicole Richie loves Ping Wu. She is clearly insane. Clearly. Jesus' dress is HORID. Kors says it looks like a crocodile trunk. Christiane's dress is not loved. Nina is not liking it. Kors isn't having it. The all like Emilio's purple circle number. I think it's the best on the runway.
9:49: okay, kids – we know Anthony's not going home because he's a character. I think it may be Jesus. Poor Jesus. Emilio for the win.
9:56: Ping is safe. Emilo WINS! Can I call them or what? Love it. GOOD JOB, EMILIO!
9:57: auf wiedersehen, Christiane. I feel like we barely knew you. Best of luck to you in the fashion world.
PREVIEWS! Oh, dear Lord, they're at a farm. Tim said "screw the challenge." Tim! Such harsh language, I'm shocked!
Well, honeys, I think this hour has give us much to be excited about for the season. I'm blogged out. Thanks for spending the hour with me!
EDITED FOR AWESOMENESS: I've downloaded the album from iTunes and it's chock full of fantastic. I've listened to it several times this afternoon and just to reiterate, "This Too Shall Pass" is the mad note. "Louisiana Land" rocks. I think we have a winner for Tunes You Need Tuesday.
I love me some Ok Go. And I love me a feel-good song when I'm down. So, here's "This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go (with the Notre Dame marching band) from their new album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky.
http://d.yimg.com/m/up/fop/embedflv/swf/fop.swf
By the way, Yahoo's the only place I could get the embed link from, so don't be surprised if it's disabled real quick-like. This is good stuff.
And you're welcome.
Oh, and because I love you, here are the lyrics.
You know you can't keep letting it get you down – And you can't keep dragging that dead weight around
If you really don’t have that much to lug around – Better run like hell when you hit the ground
When the morning comes, When the morning comes
Can't stop those kids from dancing – but why would you want to? – Especially when you are already getting yours
If your mind don’t move and your knees don’t bend – But don't go blaming the kids again
When the morning comes, When the morning comes
When the morning comes, When the morning comes
When the morning comes, When the morning comes
Let it go, This too shall pass
Let it go, This too shall pass
You know you can't keep letting it get you down, no you can't keep letting it get you down
Oh Is it really all that much to lug around, and you can't keep letting it get you down
When the morning comes (oh you can't keep letting it get you down, no you can't keep letting it get you down)
First let me just say that I have never seen the Lopez Tonight Show, nor do I watch Ghost Whisper with JLove Hewitt, but when I heard about this insanity I had to look this shizzle up. Y'all know me. You know I love an embellishment. I love a disco ball, I love some bling (have you seen the watch I got for Christmas? it's fun). But — this bitch is crazy.
JlLove Hewitt has written a book. I know. There is a chapter titled "Vajazzling." Girl done bedazzled up her vajayjay and told George Lopez it looks like a disco ball "down there." Oh, and she had "a friend" do it for her. Now, I have some close friends. None are close enough to ask to bedazzle my vajayjay, no matter how many times they may ask.
Go to minute 2:40 for the disco moment.
Oh my.
Damn. I wrote about vajayjays again, didn't I? Ugh.
Okay, I think I'm breaking up with Cleverbot.
User: What shall we talk about?
Cleverbot: I want to talk about Zen.
User: Okay then. are you a zen practitioner?
Cleverbot: No.
User: I shall call you Susan.
Cleverbot: Does that mean we are married?
User: No, I'm already married.
Cleverbot: But you just said that you loved me!
User: No, I said I shall call you Susan.
Cleverbot: No, you said that you were so in love with me.
User: Are you sure you're not a dude named Greg that stalked me in college?
Cleverbot: I have to go.
My grandparents were a tremendous influence on me growing up. I learned volumes from them on things such as family, forgiveness, community, God, work, and charity.
My grandmother, Patsy, was an adorable 4 foot 10 inch spitfire who would often curse with her signature "she-I-T" when she forgot to put the rolls in the oven or if the smoke alarm went off. She named the hummingbirds that fed in their backyard every year — all with names that started with H. She wore one of those aprons that said "nobody cooks like" with the extra letters to iron-on for your name, but in at least a decade of wearing, she never ironed her name on the apron. She always had peppermints and Wrigley's Spearmint gum. She hummed when she did housework and cooked. She used two giant leather-bound dictionaries to work the Sunday crossword puzzle, but would call me for pop-culture references when I was in middle and high school. I was devastated when Mammaw Patsy died of cancer in February of 2002, but I am grateful for every moment I was able to spend with her and for everything I learned from her.
My grandfather, Glenn, is another story altogether. I love him to death. He was a marine, a fireman, and is what my grandmother used to call "a tinkerer." I've never seen someone do more to try to fix something in my life. When we evacuated to Shreveport during Hurricane Katrina, my grandfather welcomed us with open arms. Andrew was two months old and it was less than an ideal forced vacation to my hometown. When we arrived I saw that my grandfather had all the pieces of an ironing board strewn all over the back porch and was attempting to reassemble it. It was a wooden ironing board. Made of wood. He worked on the ironing board for almost the entire two weeks we were there before giving up on it and heading to Walmart for a new ironing board. The old one had been his mother's and was probably from 1925, and no, I'm not exaggerating because my grandfather was born in 1926.
Pappaw hates new stuff. One of my favorite things to do when I'm at the house is to quiz him on the age of things around the house. My favorite is the plastic green dustpan that was purchased the same year my mother was born. So, just to show you the fun that surrounds Casa de Pappaw should you ever visit, here is my photo study.
I like to call this collection of photos "The House Where Time Stands Still."
It's always December 2003
I'm not sure if you can make it out, but the note says "Love you, Erin. 12-22-97 Merry X-mas!" Erin is my cousin, who was 12 in 1997.
This would be the new flat-screen tv next to the non-working console tv, which is now a shelf, obviously (holding the RECORD PLAYER). The kids were watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that's Johnny Depp looking weird.
This photo is from the entryway. This lovely faux wicker set has been hanging in this exact spot since 1984 when my grandparents moved into the house. Those candles used to be Williamsburg Blue and have never been lit. The red flowers are new and are just awful.
This white, orange, and green carpet could probably induce seizures. It's in the "computer room." This is the room I would sleep in when I spent the night in high school. I don't know how I didn't have nightmares. The light fixture used to match — it was all kinds of disco awesome.
No, this isn't Pappaw's current phone number, so don't call and ask for his primo decorating tips. Here's something funny though: I can remember my friend Will's phone number from high school because of this phone. When I would spend the night at my grandparents' house and call him, it took ten minutes to dial the number because of all the 9s and 7s. By the time the phone would ring, I'd already forgotten why I had called in the first place.
And now for the portion of the photo study I call "Paint it Brown." The family joke is that my Pappaw paints everything brown so it resembles wood.
Yeah, he painted the birdhouse and pole brown.
No, the mailbox didn't come in brown — he had to paint it that color. The original wooden post was hit by someone on the street, so Pappaw made a post out of some sort of metal and painted it brown to resemble wood. I believe his exact words were "just let them try to run it over now."
While I am poking fun at my grandfather, I love him very much and think he's the best. I loved spending time with him during the holidays and hearing old fireman stories and talking about Andy Griffith . He's the only person who calls my son, Andrew, "Andy" and I love that.
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While reading my usual blog round this morning, I came upon Cleverbot.com while perusing Neatorama.com. Cleverbot lets you have a "real" conversation with a computer. I thought I'd test it out for the blog. This is the real conversation I (User) had with Cleverbot.
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User: I'm in a bad mood.Cleverbot: Are you often in a bad mood? User: Sometimes.Cleverbot: Can I make you god? User: I don't know — can you?Cleverbot: I would hope so. User: Not Morgan Freeman God, though. Cleverbot: Clever. |
In my '80s iTunes playlist, my favorites are generally the British synthpop bands, which you've probably figured out by now if you've been reading the Sunday Rewind for any length of time. My favorite of the Brit synthpop bands being ABC, Thompson Twins, Human League, and Naked Eyes. Naked Eyes is probably the last of the ones I have yet to feature for one simple reason: I could not find their best song on video anywhere. Until today.
For this fan, Naked Eyes three singles from their 1983 album Burning Bridges, are their best. "When the Lights Go Out," "Promises Promises," and my favorite, "Always Something There to Remind Me" are the three songs from the band that you will remember. I simply love the last song. It is one of my favorite songs of all time. It was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David in 1963 and has been recorded by nearly everyone, including Dionne Warwick, The Carpenteres, and the wonderful Dusty Springfield. It's a beautiful song and has always reminded me of something that sounds like it belongs in The Beatles catalog, but isn't. It just sounds like a McCarney song. It's a song of desperation and longing, but it's upbeat and catchy — really a perfect little love song.
And so, I present to you today, a post over a year in the making, the '80s Sunday Rewind with Naked Eyes.
All my life I've been a writer. I use that term loosely. I'm a writer-girl. When I was seven, I wrote and illustrated my first book; it was about a turtle, written on 17 sheets of yellow paper and written in blue ink. I've always written short stories, lots and lots of fiction, some non-fiction, journals, poetry, and a novel. And a blog.
While I've never pursued getting a literary agent (and honestly, now I'd have to do a major re-write on the entire novel), I did send copies of my book off years ago to the big publishing houses, only to get rejection form letters in return. So, I can't say that I didn't try, and it won't be the end of my writing career either. I have much more to say, whether I say it on this blog, where I make exactly zero dollaroonies, or if I have a novel published one day and make it to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List. Seeing my name on a best anything list would be great.
I think about writing much of the time. To be a good writer you have to read, thus, I read quite a bit. I don't get to read as much fiction as I used to, but I read a good deal of news articles, essays, and blogs. I visit Neatorama just about everyday for fun as well and something they wrote about books caught my eye today. They mentioned The Weird Book Room at Abe Books. I read through the titles of the books on this site and kept thinking "and I can't get a book published." I'm assuming you haven't heard of these books either, so I feel it is my duty to show them to you as well.
It's really too bad Christmas has come and gone because How Green Were the Nazis? would have made a great gift for one of my good friends. I'm thinking with all the gassing and murdering in the Holocaust, the Nazis weren't all that green. But I could be wrong. Maybe they were driving electric cars and shit. Maybe Hitler was an 'effing vegan and only ate free range lettuces and used cruelty-free mustache wax. That's probably why he was so pissed off, he just wanted a burger. What are you going to tell me next? The Nazis were just misunderstood? They were all about lowering your carbon footprint? Look for my new book, How Much Does Al-Qaeda Love Kittens, due in bookstores this May!
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I am nothing if not a sports nut (and that I am a fan of the sarcasm). What I love about this book is that it combines my love of bowling with hypnosis. How You Can Bowl Better Using Self-Hypnosis sounds like the most helpful of all the self-help books ever written. What's good about this book is that if you follow the directions to the letter, the best thing that could happen is that you could end up being the best bowler of our generation and make the big bucks on the pro tour and get hot chicks (hey, pro-bowlers can get hookers just like Tiger Woods, they just have to pay for them). The worst thing that could happen if you use this book is that every time you hear the sound of pins being reset you'll cluck like a chicken and you'd attract strange looks.
"But Kerry, I'm not a bowler," you say. Have I got the book for you. This is the book for everyone. Benjamin Franklin said, "The only things certain in life are death and taxes," and it goes without saying you know someone who will need a coffin at some point in the future. Why not start a new hobby? Do It Yourself Coffins for Pets and People will teach you what you need to know about building that perfect eternal resting place. A lot of people agonize over what to do over the loss of a pet, but with this book, you'd have a plan. I'm not sure what the coffin size range is, though. So, don't sue me if you can't make coffin for your pet dwarf hamster. Speaking of size ranges, be careful if you intend to give this coffin to a loved one as a gift. If she catches you measuring her shoulders, she might think you're getting her something cheesy, like a set of football pads. Nothing quite says "I care about you, alive or dead" than a coffin. You know, Valentine's Day is just around the corner, better get started.
Maybe you're thinking more about your eternal salvation than your eternal resting place. The Beverly Hillbillies Bible Study Guide may be just what you've always wanted, but never knew existed. Frankly, I find this blasphemous. Not about God, about the Beverly Hilbillies, that show was awesome. You may not know this, but I grew up in the lower-middle class, not even middle-middle, in a less than 1000 square foot, one bathroom house (in what is now pretty much the ghetto). When I was a kid, I was loved, and being a kid, I didn't know we were poor. That is until I saw the Beverly Hillbillies and their "cement pond." I didn't know anyone with a swimming pool until my grandparents got one (above ground, you know, I mean, they weren't MADE of money) when I was ten. I can only assume that the Hillbillies can teach you more about Jesus than any high falutin' gilded-eded Bible study book could.
While we're on the subject, you know, Jesus loves me (it's a song, look it up) and I love Him right back. I'd be Pope if I could, but alas, I'm a woman and I'm not Catholic, so that's out. But if
I were running for Pope, I'd definitely get this book, How to be Pope: What to Do And Where to Go Once You're In The Vatican. You'd think they'd just publish one or two of these and pass them down or something. I'm sure there is quite a bit to know about the job, seriously — can you imagine the training video? Good Lord. Anyway, I think this would be a good book just to have on hand if you're a Catholic male because you can never be too prepared, now can you? It could be like Publisher's Clearinghouse and they just show up at your door in Pasadena with the Popemobile and the giant hat and say, "come on, Rusty, it's your turn!" Plus, I'm no Vatican scholar, but I think it's about time there's been a Pope Rusty from Pasadena.
You know I've saved the most disturbing for last. 50 Ways to Use Feminine Hygiene Products in a Manly Manner is something I saw and said "and I can't get a book published."
A Mr. B. Koz wrote a book about how men can use pads and tampons to prove, essentially, how much testosterone men have. Please tell me men aren't shooting ducks with tampon bullets. That's what the cover looks like. "Woo-hoo! Hey, Carl — did you see how I put that Tampax Pearl in that mallard's ass? I love huntin' with these things! Carl, you DID pack the tea sandwiches, didn't you? For pete's sakes, I hope you used the cranberry mayo this time."
I repeat, and I can't get a book published.
