A Thousand Words.

This is pretty much how I've been for the last two weeks, which is why I have been here so spottily. I have been keeping up with everyone else's blogs, but haven't had much to report. Yesterday was a One Nostril Day, and I got out and dug up the yard a bit, preparing for what I hope will be a banner garden year.
Today the b.h. and I went to the farmer's market in Atlanta, which was absolutely lovely and promises to make for fabulous dinner. I also bought a bunch of flower and veggie seeds from our local home improvement hell hole, as I simply could not wait for the ones I ordered online. So I'm off to dig in the dirt, or at least in the peat pods. Hopefully there will be more yard progress tomorrow. For now, I am just going to bask in the warm glow of my Two Nostril Night.

Finally.

A Summer Blockbuster I can actually look forward to.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/thesimpsonsmovie/trailer3_large.html

S-A-T-U-R- D-A-Y NIGHT!

Apologies in advance for the lack of links on this post. The "New Blogger" doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me today. Fuckers.

So the b.h. played a show on Saturday evening, along with his band, some friends from Tennessee, and a fantastic band from Ohio whose name I cannot recall to save my life right now. (Sorry, guys).
After bartending for a room full of our friends for four hours, I was relieved by the night shift and we all made our way over to the Caledonia Lounge to see three more fantastic bands. Mother Jackson sounded better than they ever have, in my humble opinion; Still Small Voice was great, as usual, though I am not sure that the setting suits them as well as Tasty World; and Southern Bitch brought the house down for their CD release show. Wendy looks fantastic, having recovered (we hope) fully from her emergency surgery. She was stomping around stage in a pair of very tall, very glittery, gold high heels, that I could neither pull of nor stand on for more than a split second under the best of circumstances. It was really impressive. They all played as well as I have ever seen them.
At night's end I wound up piloting the van for our out of town friends, who at that point had been drinking for a full fourteen hours. I was immediately reminded how lucky I am to have learned to drive in a 1977 Ford LTD. The guys were sprawled out in the back and the b.h., who is not a driver, was in the passenger's seat. We left our car downtown (no tickets on the Lord's Day), and headed home. Mostly when I am around a group of very loud, very drunk people, I am immediately irritated and whenever possible i run in another direction. This particular group of guys has the distinction of being both very tolerable and highly amusing, however, and I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard as I did on that ride.

Overheard in the van:
"That monkey bit my uncle Johnny on the head you know."
"Yeah, he was a mean summbitch. They wound up pumpin 'im with a thirty ought six after he got that mailman."
"He threw that mailman twenty feet they said. Put 'im in the hospital."

Not sure how that coversation started, but the b.h. and I spent some time in bed later trying to decide if the monkey was real, or if it was a private joke that they had launched into. As it turned out, the monkey was real, and he was a chimp, and the chimp lived in a neighborhood called - wait for it - Frog @lley. Back in the seventies. I don't know. But it was funny.

Then we pulled into the grocery store parking lot to grab some frozen pizzas. The van's lights went straight into a car that was parked with what appeared to be three teenaged guys sleeping in it. The b.h. and I left the van running and the band inside while we ran for the food. When we came out, the formerly sleeping guys were gone, and from the van all you could hear, across the whole parking lot, was loud Irish rock music (we think it was Flogging Molly) and raucous laughter. The ride ended with Johnny Paycheck's Colorado Kool Aid, and if you haven't heard that song you should really go find it. I laughed so hard I almost wrecked the van.
Yesterday was a mix of errand running and loafing around. It was really cold and really windy, but I have heard that it should be seventy degrees by Thursday. I hope that's the end of the cold, because we are just about out of firewood, and I hate to pay five bucks a bundle for it at the grocery store.

Master Procrastinator.

Although I have actually done quite a bit of cleaning today, I am putting off emptying the dishwasher just a little longer. I am trying to hurry up and clean the house because the b.h. and I are hosting some friends from out of town whose band is playing in town today. The guys are extremely laid back, and probably wouldn't notice how filthy my house is (though you could harldy miss the dog hair tumble weeds blowing across the kitchen floor), and are likely to be too drunk to notice either way. I am, however, my mother's daughter, and therefore cleaning frantically. And listening to The Hold Steady. They are really great. They got band of the Year on either MySpace or Pitchfork or one of those internet sites, which in my book is much more prestigious than a Grammy any day. So yeah. Still procrastinating. Except I can't think of anything else to say. Crap. Oh well, to the kitchen then...

Tuesday is the New Sunday.

More or less, anyway. I did actually get some work done. But then I came home and loafed about quite a bit, and we watched The Dep@rted . It was fantastic. And not at all your typical Hollywood fare, which surprised and delighted me. I won't say more, in case some of you haven't seen it yet.
Okay, off to loaf some more. The b.h. has just set some thai coconut soup in front of me.

Appearances

Yesterday I went to a flea market/antique mall with my good friend J. J is a rather large and difficult to miss guy. He's about six and a half feet tall, long-haired, and built like a professional wrestler (which he was, for a short time). He has a propensity for wearing colorful clothing. He is also a Reverend-of sorts. He got a certificate from the church that advertises in the back of Rolling Stone magazine (a la' Chris In The Morning from Northern Exposure). He actually performed my wedding ceremony.

Anyway, I take great pleasure in shopping with J, because he likes to browse the way that I do, and his commentary is very amusing and often very audible. Case in point: In the middle of the antique mall, in an area where several other shoppers were browsing, he held up a plaque excitedly.

"This makes me happy on so many levels," he said.

The plaque read:

If you're to busy to pray you're to busy.

And J said, rather loudly: "If you're too busy to pray, you should learn how to fucking spell."

I laughed. He laughed. People looked at us like we had just shit in the middle of the aisle.

As I was checking out, J was hovering nearby perusing some jewelery and other accessories in a glass case. I thanked the woman who owns the shop (who had not even heard his earlier outburst, because we were in another room) profusely, and turned to leave. Still smiling from ear to ear (I love a bargain and my junk habit is easily satisfied in this particular establishment) I said

"Are you ready, Reverend?"

"Indeed I am," replied J, who then turned to the proprietress and said cheerfully and without irony "Have a wonderful day. And God bless!"

I think she may have lifted her jaw from the floor in time for church today, but I can't be certain.

Hey! There are people out there!

So, um, Blogger forced me to upgrade. And lo and behold, I discovered actual reader comments. Which I immediately published. I have no idea how it happened, but I'm glad it did. Anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that I have a difficult time with this whole tech-nol-o-gy thing (Thus my Yahoo! e-mail address, despite the fact that Gmail is clearly superior. I even have the "old" version of Yahoo! mail). Anyway, apologies (and thanks!) to those of you who have bothered to comment. I will now attend to the comments regularly.

I'm not a huge fan of this font, but I just tried to change it twice and I couldn't get it together. I'll ask the b.h. for help tomorrow.

I have just finished Eats Shoots & Leaves, a fantastic punctuation book written by a woman named Lynne Truss (I probably just misspelled her name, but I mean no disrespect). It is hilarious and amazing, and I recommend it to anyone who is as frustrated as I am by other people's stupidity. Mind you, I am also frustrated by my own stupidity, but there isn't nearly as much (heh). Anyway, the author is British, and she gives rules for both British and American punctuation, and I find myself borrowing from both, so forgive me. It just seems that some of their rules are much more logical. Examples? Don't ask me for examples! Read the book!

Why no examples? Well, because I have spent my entire (long) evening waiting on a group I have fondly dubbed The Visor Brigade. Theree are three kinds of people who wear visors: Golfers, Tennis Players, and Douchebags. These boys belonged in the third category. Yessir, white visors and red necks. It was nice to be busy, though.

At the end of the night the guy who headlined told us a great story about seeing Jack Black at LAX. Apparently, it was after Tenacious D, but before maximum JB saturation. Our hero was about 17 years old, and he was killing time in an airport gift shop before his flight. He saw JB in the shop, went up to him, and asked for an autograph. This was, he said, his first celebrity encounter, so we might imagine that he was probably outwardly excited. JB signed his plane ticket, then asked the kid to watch his bag. The kid agreed. JB set the bag down next to the checkout counter. Several minutes later, the kid was starting to get nervous that he was going to miss his flight. He asked the woman behind the checkout counter what time it was. She did not speak English, but she did laugh at him. Several minutes after that, he discovered that the bag in question had been lifted off the wall in the gift shop and dropped on the floor when he wasn't looking. Hilarious. A.J., take note. Apparently there is one thing old JB can teach you. Fan avoidance. And you oughtta be needing that soon.

Lies.

So the package says "washes off easily with soap and water", and being a foolish consumer, I somehow think that this means I will be able to remove it easily in the shower before bed. I am not a big fan of makeup anyway, but it really makes a difference in a bar setting, especially when one is not blessed with much pigment and doesn't often see daylight. When I applied this new mascara, i marvelled at the way it didn't fall in clumps from the brush (When did I buy that last tube? Probably sometime in the late nineties)and onto my freshly concealered and powdered under eye area. "Hey - this stuff really works!" I thought. Very exciting.
It wasn't until hours later, standing in the shower, scrubbing at my eyes with a washcloth full of soap, that I started to lose confidence. After that I tried actual eye-makeup remover (thanks for leaving that behind, Shayne), as well as face lotion, hand lotion, and vaseline. Now, eighteen hours later, I have started scraping it off with my fingernails, one clump of lashes at a time. There is a lovely racoon-like shadow all the way around my eyes from where I have been rubbing them. It is not pretty. Thank the gods it's Sunday and I don't have to leave the house.

At Least One Person I know Has His Shit Together.

So I find myself feeling not at all creative, and really tired of all the political shite that I seem to have become addicted to, and I do a Google search for A.J.'s movie. Here's what the critics are saying:

"The entire production is a by-product of a thriving regional film scene based in Atlanta, Ga., including The Signal’s uniformly excellent cast, who could all give the Hollywood types a run for their money. With the showiest parts in the piece, two players in particular get to shine: A.J. Bowen, who plays the maniacal betrayed husband and bug exterminator Lewis Fenton with some of Jack Nicholson’s savage glee from The Shining; and Scott Poythress as an affable know-it-all neighbor trapped between his lovable old self and the deadly new one struggling to be born."

"The cast in the film is top notch and I hope they stick with their Atlanta crew, as once this thing hits big they will surely have offers flowing in from everywhere. AJ Bowen’s portrayal of Lewis is a particular highlight as he is a major part of all three transmissions in the film and finds himself varying from evil villain, scorned husband, to kooky freaked out guy that may or may not be insane, but god damnit he’s entertaining."

"The Signal is hilariously violent. It was filmed by three different directors in three different parts (the first of which is probably the best). It’s not just another gory horror film (although it is gory), it is smart and has a relevant social message. It’s amazing to see what a bunch of young filmmakers can do on a low budget. Some of these sequences look like they should belong in a big scale movie."

"In the end THE SIGNAL will burn it’s transmission into your brain and leave you with an impression that will never go away. This is that film that leaves you with that special glow (yes, kind of like after sex), the smile that doesn’t fade and the conversations that never cease. Eventually, THE SIGNAL will earn its place amongst the greatest cult horror films of all time."

Convinced.

Well, I was dubious when I saw them at the store, but our electronic mouse repellers seem to be working very well. They are not exactly this brand (gods know we couldn't afford fifty-eight bucks a room for pest control*), but very similar. They do not seem to affect the dogs at all. All of this makes me very happy, and I was just sitting here marvelling at the lack of mice when I saw a moth. Blast!




*Actually, the devices we bought were about six bucks each.