Well Then...

I guess Daniel Radcliffe can officially forget about being typecast. And Warner Brothers can count on picking up a few more fans for the next movie.

Old School.

So The Bottle Rockets kicked much ass to about thirty people. Poured a drink for Pete Buck. No yogurt was thrown. It was unbearably cold outside, so I guess I can see why some people would stay home, but I was disappointed in everybody else. Sometimes this town really lets me down. At least the band didn't.

I haven't blogged much lately because I have been alternately so bored I had nothing to say and so busy I have no time to talk about it. Right now I have reached a comfortable middle ground. The big over-priced condos are coming along across the street. They have now got a third floor on the building, so in addition to being awakened every morning (even Sunday!) by loud, stupid machinery, I also get the feeling that the guys putting the roof on can probably see into my bedroom. Luckily at that hour there is nothing to see except me chanting incantations over a voodoo doll-esque "my little over-priced condo" set and burning incense. I do hope that they finish soon. Even though I have no desire to have neighbors within sight of my house, at least I would have a chance at sleeping through the night. In the meantime, I will continue to sneak over and fertilize the trees and shrubbery on that side of the pond in hopes that they will block out the view before there are any viewers.
Not much is really going on other than that. Have been doing some writing. Have interviewed for another (supplementary) job. Have seen Scott Miller at the Melting Point. Missed The Lemonheads twenty-five minute set at the 40 Watt on Saturday, complete with stupidly drunk Evan Dando getting cussed out by one Ms. Barry Buck. Wish I had seen it, but glad I didn't pay for it. Tonight the Bottle Rockets will rock Tasty World. Looking forward to it. Haven't seen them in years.

HOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAP!!!

From Variety, which I have never read in my entire life until today:

This one sold in the lobby of the Egyptian Theater around 2 a.m.

Signal

Magnolia Films bought Park City at Midnight selection "The Signal," which premiered Tuesday morning. $2.3 million for U.S., U.K. and Australian rights.

Fucking A. Or perhaps, fucking A.J. I have never been so proud.

Ah...Sunday.

It's a rare occasion when the b.h. and I are both in the kitchen (he does about 99.9% of the cooking in our house), but it is a lot of fun, even with a hundred and twenty pounds of dog lying perpetually underfoot. Today we made a quick dash out in the rain to get some groceries, and then got to cooking right away. He made a lovely roasted cauliflower dish with a cilantro-ey curry sauce. I made a batch of homemade chai, which I am about to get a cup of as soon as I'm through posting. I also finally used up the last of our Georgia mountain apple supply in an apple cranberry pie. I am still slightly intimidated by the crust thing (rolling and crimping are not my strong suits), but it does get easier every time. And hell, if I ever hope to be half the pie lady that Jamie is, I'd better keep practicing.

Crossing my fingers and sending my best vibes to AJ, whose film The Signalwill debut at Sundance in just over twenty-four hours. Good Luck!

Overheard...

"If I cheated on my wife, they'd never find my dick."

Sometimes all you need is half the story.

Chicks Dig It.

Thankfully, the last band tonight was the best (least horrid is actually much more accurate, but I'm trying to be all glass-half-full here), so we ended the night on a slightly more positive note than the one on which we began it. After that I spent way too much time explaining to the bass player (who looked not unlike a bald Derek Smalls) that wearing his wedding band during shows would actually attract chicks. Honestly, boys. What are you thinking? That ring means that you put the lid down, you pick your socks up, that you might even know how to wash a dish. It means that you're already trained for christ's sake. And chicks dig that.

The Joy of Public Bathrooms.

So I'm standing (hovering, actually, at the risk of being slightly graphic) in the ladies' room, and the girl in the next stall starts talking. At first I thought she might be out of toilet paper or in desperate need of a tampon, either of which is a perfectly acceptable reason to start a stall-to-stall conversation with a complete stranger. She wasn't. Then I thought she might be in there with a friend. Checking for feet, I saw that this wasn't the case either. Was she talking to herself? I wondered. After a few minutes I realized that she was on her cell phone. Did the person on the other end realize where she was talking from? Somehow I'd have preferred to think she was talking to herself. I took extra time washing my hands, wanting for some odd reason to put a face with the voice of the bathroom talker. Alas, the bar was busy, and she was quite involved in her conversation, so I had to go.

Quote of the Year.

I know it's the beginning of Jamuary and everything, but seriously. I can't imagine anybody topping this one. If they'd like to try, they have 355 days.

(Drumroll)

"I didn't know she was a hooker. I thought she was a stripper."

Spoken by one of the biggest jackasses in town, in reference to his fornicating with a young lady in a public bathroom. In a bar. A bar where he used to work.

Runner up for quote o' the year 2007 is from the young lady's friend, who actually was a stripper:

"I know she does this for money sometimes, and that's one thing, but for free? In the bathroom?! That's just embarrassing"

Man, I love this fucking town.

The Department of Motor Vehicles.

I never, ever refer to the DMV by its full name, but I realized while typing that title that it is tremendously effective in conveying the sheer Brazil-like nature of that particular government office.
"Go in the middle of the afternoon," my friend K assured me. "That's what I did last time I had to renew my license and I was in and out of there in no time."
I also had to renew my vehicle tags, so I set out much earlier than I would normally do on a friday afternoon. The tag office was a snap. It took me longer to park my car and walk through the metal detector than it did to get my new stickers. You can't really appreciate that unless you have lived in a large city and waited in two lines for over an hour, only to be told yet again that you are in the wrong line, year after year until you finally, in an act of subconscious desperation, leave the keys in the ignition of your aging and decrepit rust-encrusted auto, and park it under the El tracks where it gets stolen, thereby saving your life, trimming your waistline, and restoring your sanity. Having had these experiences, I appreciated the tag office experience immensely. So much so that I may have frightened the middle-aged woman behind the counter and the fat security guard with my enthusiastic-bordering-on-psychotic grin and over-loud "Have a great day!!" as I blew through the doors of the courthouse and out into the horrific storm (a tornado watch, no less).
I was prepared for the worst.
It had stopped raining by the time I got there. The parking lot was pretty packed. I entered the front door and saw to my utter joy that there were currently only two people in the first line. And there were only a handful of people sitting in the waiting area. I was puzzled by this until I read the giant sign on the back wall indicating that no driving tests were given in the rain. Sweet.
I got to the front of the line and one of the women who works there came up to the older lady in front and explained that someone would be over in a minute to distrubute numbers to those of us in the first line. (Numbers that would then be called to move us into other lines, based on our individual needs--oh, the efficiency!! I became suddenly wildly optimistic. This was not the DMV I remembered from five years ago.) A few people walked in behind me. About a minute and a half passed before the second woman in line, who had been talking to her teenaged son and had not heard our instructions, turned to the first woman and asked what was going on.
"I don't know," she said, "She said there would be somebody here in a minute to give us numbers but there isn't anybody here." Obviously a literalist. They began discussing their general confusion. I began ignoring them and instead turned my attention to the guy at the first window who was trying to get his license back.
"So I got like, four tickets in a coupla months," he said very loudly. "If I take like, a defensive driving course or somethin' can I get like a couple points off that?"
The woman behind the counter looked weary. She also looked like she wanted reach over the counter and slap the shit out of him, but instead she answered "Yes" very stiffly and stared at her computer screen. This guy was about fifty pounds overweight, dressed in a rumpled pair of Dockers and an even more rumpled polo shirt. He was probably about thirty, but he looked a lot older. He continued his ill-advised blathering.
"Yeah, I drive for work all the time, and I'm not really paying attention, and I never wear my seatbelt, and of course I usually speed..."
My jaw was dropping a little lower with every word he spoke. The woman behind the counter looked up at him, and then, in an almost Ferris Bueller-like fashion, looked directly into my eyes, in a split second conveying both her desire to throttle him and her knowledge that this would be completely futile, because after I helped her bury the body there would be a whole line of similar nitwits waiting at her window when she returned. She looked back at him.
"You're all set."
"I can go then?"
"Yes sir," was her verbal response. You fucking useless waste of natural resources the implied end to that statement, clear as day on her face, which he wasn't looking at. He smiled and nodded at me as he walked outside, presumably to get on his cell phone while speeding through a school zone.
I was laughing and looking around for anyone else who may have been privy to the same conversation. They were still worrying about whether or not the promised paper numbers would actually materialize. They did. I had to bump up my weight on my new license by about ten pounds and change my address, but other than that my visit was incredibly uneventful. Which is exactly how I like it.

Random Weirdness.

Sometimes I will take a picture or make a note of something with the intention of posting it. Often I forget about these things for a long time. This is one of those things: