Mark It One

Do you have any idea what a bleeding pain in the ass it is to find stone-ground cornmeal in the pasty white state of Oregon?

When I asked a friend to pick some up for me at the grocery store a while ago, she came back with a box of regular ol' steel-ground, saying they didn't have stone-ground. That's preposterous, thought I. What grocery store worth its salt doesn't carry stone-ground cornmeal? I figured maybe she had just missed it. (This article will give a little info on the difference between the grinds, or at the least, clue you in to the Southern obsession with good cornmeal.)

Last night I wanted to make some corn bread sticks (shaped like little ears of corn - it's quite darling) for tonight. Damned if I was gonna sully myself by using steel-ground. So I decided to go to Fred Meyer - I nearly stopped at the QFC on the way, since it's almost certainly cheaper, but then I figured they might, just might, not have stone-ground. It was raining too hard for me to contemplate more than one stop. So I arrived at Freddie's & filled my basket: 2 ears of corn, heavy cream, milk, Gold Medal bleached all-purpose flour (ugh; I know. But Southerners have them some good food, so who I am to fault their abundant usage of bleached flour, even if it makes me feel dirty & cheap?). And then I see it: the problem my friend had. There is no stone-ground cornmeal. In fact, there are only two options, both from the same brand: white or yellow. However, this is why I specifically chose Freddie's - they have a "natural foods" section. I ran over to its bulk products. Cornmeal, yes. Stone-ground, no. Well shit, I thought. But I had knowledge of a secret weapon: Bob's Red Mill, a local business that makes flours & such using quartz millstones. And sure enough, there in the natural baking section, I found a small bag emblazoned with the magic words that made my heart sing: stone-ground yellow cornmeal. (Yellow vs. white cornmeal is a whole 'nother can of worms & arguments.)

As I walked up to the register, what should have been laughably obvious finally occurred to me: I lived in Virginia when I started baking. Right? Pseudo-South though it may be, of course stone-ground cornmeal was practically falling out of the trees in every brand & color you can imagine. Crap, you could even get it at the IGA in Scottsville. Oregon, on the other hand, may be a land of delicious produce, tasty cheeses, & naturally raised beef, but it is clearly not the land of cornmeal.

So there you go, Virginia. You've finally scored your first point over Oregon. Don't let it go to your head.

Say Hello!

Meet Jasper, my darling new car. Jasper is a 2007 Toyota Corolla LE (the "L" is for luxury, people). It was love at first sight. That & the fact that I'm a sucker for a pretty face with under 17K miles on it. Jasper is more accustomed to the finer things in life than was the Road Warrior, so I expect to drop a bit more moolah on him, but you know, I think he's worth it.

Without further ado:

The color was key. Ever since I bought the silver Road Warrior, I'd been envious of the gunmetal gray Toyotas. Really, aren't Corollas boring enough without having a dull color to compound it?

Power windows were a non-negotiable must.

Oh the luxury of faux-wood paneling! My heart quivers.

And I would be remiss if I failed to remark upon the coup de grace, the feature that was my heart's secret desire:

Remote key entry, oh yeah!

I will always have a special love for the Road Warrior - it was, after all, not only the very first car I'd ever bought, but also its very purchase was at the time a wonderfully freeing & empowering action. But Jasper is like the Road Warrior squared. I am pleased.

BTW

Hairspray is the modern movie musical for which I've so been longing.

It was shown on a flight I took recently. If it played on every flight I ever took, I would be a happy camper.

I watched it again on Thanksgiving at my folks' house.

Both times I realized about 2/3 of the way through that I'd had a big stupid grin on my face during the entire movie.

Much as I adore musicals, I didn't really want to like it - I've simply an abundance of fondness for the John Waters original. Plus, I didn't find the thought of John Travolta in drag to be hysterically funny solely on principle, as so many seem to have. But, shit, it won me over with the opening number alone. It's really fun, it's really well done, & it's just fantastic. It achieves a rare feat in managing to be super-sweet without being saccharine. Completely simplistic, but if you want, like, "a socialist critique of a capitalist world", go watch G.W. Pabst's film version of The Threepenny Opera & chase it with Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera or something equally drab.

Just don't invite me, because I'm gonna be busy singing along at the top of my lungs to "Good Morning Baltimore".

Old Faithful

Funtastic car update! Unofficially Officially, it's totaled. Let's just say it was towed to a salvage yard & not a body shop.

Of course, I won't know for sure until today. I'm getting a wee bit testy with Geico. The accident occurred on Saturday 17 November. I wasn't able to pick up a rental car until Monday - no biggie, as I didn't even get out of my jammies that day, let alone go outside. There was a bit of foolishness about the place it was towed, because the police wrote down one towing company name on the report; it turned out that it was actually towed by a totally different company. Which took a good two hours of my Monday morning to figure out. Thanks, Portland police!

Once I knew where it was, I called the place & released the car to Geico. Silly girl that I am, I kinda figured they might tow it to the body shop (at this point I had not heard any different) on that same day. Crazy, right? On Tuesday I received a voicemail from the liability claims adjuster, which made it sound as though my car hadn't been towed. I called her back; she didn't answer; I left a message saying where it had been towed & that I had released it on Monday, & that my assumption had been that they would tow it on that very same day.

On Wednesday, my damage claims adjuster called. He said that the towing company said that I hadn't released the car. On Wednesday. A solid forty eight hours after I'd released the car. Four days after the crash. I called the towing company, & they confirmed that no, the crack hasn't irreparably damaged my brain cells, because they showed that I released the car on Monday.

I called him back & left a message. I did need to speak with him, because I hadn't left the key with the vehicle, & he needed that to check the odometer. I left two messages for him on Wednesday, neither of which were returned. I actually ended up calling the towing company around 4 p.m. to make sure the car had been towed. It had. I called the body shop to make sure it had gotten there. It hadn't.

(Thanksgiving pause. I am thankful that I am not one of Geico's butthead adjusters.)

On Friday morning, I called the adjuster again, around 11 a.m. He actually answered! And told me that my car had been towed to a salvage yard, not a body shop. Naturally, he hadn't actually looked at the car; based on the description he thinks it's gonna be a total loss. My favorite part? The salvage lot was closed & wasn't going to open until today. Monday. Nine days after the accident. So today is hopefully the day I will finally find out if my car is gone. (I gave the key to him on Friday.)

Of course, if Geico had actually towed the car last Monday, when they said they were going to, I would probably have known by Wednesday whether the car was a total loss or not. And I would probably have managed to get myself a new (used) car by now, because I already know what I want.

But here's my question: am I crazy, or does it seem really stupid that a collison in which I certainly was going no more than five, ten max, miles per hour (I was turning left, after all) has completely totaled my car to the point where its repair would cost more than the car is worth? I mean, it's a 2003 Toyota Corolla - it's not the pimpest ride on the block, but it ain't no '85 Mazda. Are cars made out of peanut brittle nowadays? It seems to support my suspicion that Mr. Mazda was most likely speeding at the time of impact.

Holy Crap

I haven't been to a first-run theater besides Cinema 21 (a special case, since the first screenings on Saturday & Sunday are $4, & that's all I go to) since I saw Children of Men way back in, I think, January of this year. But, of course, my beloved Todd Haynes' new film I'm Not There opens today, & obviously I am trotting out to see it as soon as Aprilly possible (meaning, methinks, Friday). Oddly enough considering Mr. Haynes resides in Portland, it's playing in only one theater - the Regal Fox Tower 10. It's a short bus ride or healthy walk away, which is nice (hurrah for city life!), but in researching the showtimes I discovered the freakin' ticket prices. And apparently I am way, way out of the loop here.

Eight dollars for a matinee?!?!?! And, of course, ten dollars for a regular showing.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted that anybody, anywhere, still goes to these chain multiplexes. I mean, unless I'm mistaken, most of the movies that play at such theaters are kind of awful. Even if they are "independent", whatever that means nowadays.

I now feel completely justified in waiting for movies to come to the Laurelhurst, CineMagic, Avalon or Bagdad. Those multiplex hos can lick on these nuts & suck the dick.

P.S. Heh. Look at the sidebar - I'm watching, reading & listening all Haynes. If this were a Douglas Sirk movie, it would so be Magnificent Obsession.

Flufftards

I love my cats. They are clearly aliens from the Planet Cute. I don't know how a jerkface like me was lucky enough to end up with not one but two adorable, sweet, cuddlesome creatures such as these.

That is all.

Fuck You, Heidi Klum

One day you're in, the next day you're in the crapper.

On Saturday I awoke feeling pretty shitty & dizzy, & decided to spend the day at home knitting to crap DVDs. Unfortunately, I ran out of crap. Then while reading US Weekly (which, for the record, is deliciously nasty), I saw that the third season of "Project Runway" only cost $28. So I decided to run out to Barnes & Ignoble to purchase it.

It was possibly the worst decision of my entire life.

How can I put this? I totaled my car. My beautiful, sturdy, dependable Road Warrior. Which won't even be paid off until 2012. I was making a left hand turn off NE 21st onto Multnomah. It was my duty to yield. Obviously, I didn't see any cars coming. But clearly I was wrong. One second I was starting my turn, the next my airbags were deployed & my windshield was smashed. I could hardly even open the driver's side door to get out.

I'll try to be succinct: I'm fine. To the best of my knowledge, the other driver is fine. The cars, on the other hand, are not. My Corolla is easily eight inches less in length than it used to be. The other car actually didn't look quite as wretched as mine. Thank God it was pretty much head-on; I didn't drive into the side of the other vehicle.

First I was shocked. Then I started crying. Mostly because there were all these people around - police, medical technicians, firemen - but nobody was talking to me! I started to feel like everybody hated me - stupid, to be sure, but clearly I was in a horrid frame of mind. They told me I could leave, so I started walking back toward home & called a friend to pick me up. She had to put her animals away (another long story!), & by the time she called me back I was walking past Everyday Music on Sandy, so I told her to pick me up there. I wanted some goddamn DVDs.

And some goddamn DVDs I got. I'd like to think I am the only person in the history of the world who has purchased these DVDs at the same time: Dirty Dancing (the 2-disc ULTIMATE edition, baby!), 13 Going On 30 (shut up - Jennifer Garner is human sparkles in this movie), & Kieslowski's The Decalogue. Because I've never made it more than 3 episodes either time I've tried to watch it, even though it's flat-out amazing, so I decided that if I owned it, eventually one day I would watch them all. My friend bought Happy Gilmore - I told her that if ever there was a time when it wouldn't be pulling teeth to get me to watch an Adam Sandler movie, this was that time.

Somehow, in between crying & DVD-buying, the whole situation became hilarious & I couldn't stop laughing. It was funny that I hadn't gotten around to filling up my gas tank. It was funny that one of my big weekend goals was to clean my car out. It was funny that I'd been planning on getting a tune-up for my car. It was freakin' hysterical that we'd just had Winter Safety Driving at my work, on Friday. Serious. The growth of pains in various parts of my body was amusing. (At the start, it was just my knee, but every 20 minutes or so I got a new pain - stomach, neck, collarbone, etc.)

So we picked up some beer on the way home. I phoned my insurance company to report the claim & my friend went out & got us pizza. I took a Valium, put on my pajamas, & cracked a beer. After the pizza, I promptly passed out (although I can't say I wasn't enjoying Happy Gilmore).

The next morning, my body was a compendium of pain. I noticed bruises in places I didn't think it was possible to get bruises. Every day it seems they get uglier & redder. My knee, my stomach, my collarbone, the inner part of one of my freakin' boobs, the bridge of my nose (from my glasses).

But, you know, shit happens. And maybe my precious Road Warrior isn't totaled. Even if it is, I'm so just getting another Corolla. Except this one will be gunmetal in color & have power windows. Although I got a snazzy lil' PT Cruiser for my rental car (is it totally lame to think that those are kinda cute? Who's the stereotypical Cruiser driver?), which I have to admit is pretty fun to drive.

Right now, though, I just wish I was still at home in my jammies.

Curry, Knitting & the Infected

No single theme for me today!

1) Pho Van is fantastic. I'm only sad that I'd never previously dined there. Delicious & no more than a hop, skip & jump (meaning ~12 blocks) away! I got the vegetarian curry, & while I was sorely disappointed that the sugar snap peas described on the menu were lacking, there was a surprise bonus of those tiny ears of corn!, which I can't help but find adorably cute, as recompense.

2) Xavier the Bitey Bastard decided Monday night that the tip of one of my #7 bamboo knitting needles would make a tasty treat. So I trotted over to the Yarn Garden last night - luckily, I needed some cotton yarn anyway - for a new pair. But what I found instead were these:


Which you can find here. Honestly, I didn't really need light-up knitting needles, but (1) they are awesome & make me happy & (2) Le Garden was fresh out of wooden #7 needles, & if I have to knit with plastic, they'd damn well better light up. The #7s come in blue. Knit one, lite one, indeed!

3) At some point between 1996 & 2002, Danny Boyle became a fantastic filmmaker, at least based on 28 Days Later, which I finally watched. I mean, yeah, I liked Shallow Grave & Trainspotting enough to actually sit through A Life Less Ordinary (which caused me to avoid Boyle for well-nigh a decade) but they always seemed kind of...gimmicky. He exhibited unrestrained visual flair within equally flamboyant narratives featuring caricatured characters, which honestly just gets somewhat tiring to watch. But with 28 Days Later, he really got it right. He astonished me with beautiful imagery (no doubt partially attributable to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle). He did something I thought was impossible - made me find digital video not just passable, not merely acceptable, but actually & truly lovely. It's got to be the most visually stimulating, gorgeous horror movie I've ever seen. It's one of the most gorgeous movies, period, that I've seen in a good while. And on top of that, he managed to find the hearts of his characters. And on top of that, he made a movie that's scary. The last third or so gets a bit heavy-handed & obvious, & its metaphors start to weigh it down into tedium territory, but let's just blame screenwriter Alex Garland for that.


4) All right, it's time to admit it: Cillian Murphy is my latest movie star crush. It's taken me a long time to get to this point, because he's simply nothing like the people I tend to crush on. He's boyish yet somehow feminine with good bone structure, for heaven's sake. However, he did tell Jane magazine that the celebrity he'd like to make out with is Maggie Gyllenhaal. So at least we've got the same taste in girls. Also, he does have a few things that tend to be themes for me: (1) Voice. Anything with an accent gets an automatic cuteness boost. (1.a) Name. Fantastic first name, both written & spoken. (2) Eyes. His face is full of his eyes, & they are limpid pools of cerulean luminosity. (3) Demeanor. This is where I get weird. It's important to understand that my first-ever movie crush, at the age of eight, was David Bowie in Labyrinth. Technically, if you think babies are better than Goblin Kings with rockin' hair & tight pants, he was the bad guy. The first movie I ever saw Cillian Murphy in was Batman Begins. The second was Red Eye. He plays psychopaths in both. But apparently I go for that weird, not-nice thing. After David Bowie, there was John Malkovich as Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons, then David Thewlis as Johnny in Mike Leigh's brilliant Naked. (And if you've seen it, you'll know just how completely fucked up it is to crush on Johnny.) You can see where this is going. The point is, Cillian Murphy is beautiful & frequently dangerous, & this is a potent combination. I might add that I am now thoroughly excited about Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto. Murphy playing a cabaret singer in girl's clothes named "Kitten"? Yes, please.

But, y'know, there's a chance that maybe, just maybe, I have some sort of deep-rooted unconscious issues at work here:

Whoulda Thunk It?

Apparently I'm living in the right place. In Oregon, you as the voter get direct say in a whole bunch of things. Usually, there are tons'n'tons of ballot measures for your voting pleasure - last year, I recall my friend getting not one but TWO thick voter info pamphlets in the mail. This is why we have medical marijuana. This is why we are the only state to have legal euthanasia. This is why Oregon still has no sales tax. This is why every Oregon voter votes by mail - yep, we voted on that, too.

So, honestly, I was kind of bummed that for my first time out as an Oregon voter (I'm still not sure that my absentee ballot in '99 ever got there on time), I only had two measly measures on which to vote. Granted, they were pretty fun ones, but still.

Measure 49 harkened back to a measure a few years ago that I missed out on, Measure 37. Something to do with land use & property values, yadda yadda yadda, Measure 37 seems to have been intended for individual property owners who wanted to build one or two houses on their land, but due to loopholes ended up becoming the go-to measure for massive claims by developers & timber companies to build crap on estuaries & other bad-guy stuff. Measure 49 is supposed to close those loopholes & get back to what 37 was meant to accomplish.

Honestly, I read the measure. It was like reading Foucault through oatmeal goggles. Meaning I didn't follow a lot of it. I read all of the arguments for & against. But my decision to vote "yes" came down to three things:

• Development is bad news for animals. Hey, I saw Pom Poko. Those poor tanukis! (This also takes me into my idea that "ownership" (i.e., "it's MY property") is one of the sillier conceits we as humans have devised - though of course, one day I do intend to "own" my own house.)
  
• I don't believe in development for people either. We've built enough crap. Let's live with it & not add to it.
• I have passed through the rolling, subdivision-choked hills of Northern Virginia on more than one occasion & endured the traffic-clogged two-lane "country" roads created thereby. Nuff said.
  

Measure 50 was misleadingly labeled the "Healthy Kids" measure. Basically, this measure would have increased the cigarette tax by 85 cents per pack, using the additional revenue to supply medical insurance for those scads of kids who don't have it. Which on the surface sounds really great. Shit, I smoke, & I would've considered it. Except:

• It would have amended the state Constitution. For a tax? Um, no. That's just wrong. I would have voted "no" based solely on that, frankly. I think I'm secretly Libertarian libertarian anyway.
  
• The money was guaranteed to have been used for kids & other medically underserved Oregonians through 2011. So...where's it going after that?
• Oregon already has some program for uninsured kids. That hardly anyone's bothering to use. Why don't they fix that first?*
• Even the writers of the ballot admitted this was a "short-term solution". Which takes us back to...amending the Constitution for something that isn't really going to fix anything, & is only valid for four years?*
  

So, yeah, the majority of Oregon voters came down on my side. 'Cause I'm fucking right. I'm kind of surprised that Measure 50 didn't pass, actually. It had a huge smiley face & voter-friendly pat on the back to obscure that whole fucking-with-the-constitution thing. Props to my fellow citizens for paying attention.

* Yeah, I'm always the person who's like, "Back it up with facts, bitch" but I'm way too lazy today to do that here. This is just based on stuff I heard on NPR & read in The Oregonian.

Toothsomewhatless

It is so very extremely fantastically wonderful to not have my wisdom teeth! My mouth feels great as long as I forget that there are two gaping holes in there. Well, by now they're hopefully two blood-clotted holes. No longer will Mr. Cuts Like a Knife over there on the right continue digging that hole in my cheek. Mr. Massive Cavity on the left will never freak me out again. And although I still maintain that dentistry is highway robbery (grand out-of-pocket total including pills was about $834 - insurance kicked in $1K), I'm so so happy that I finally went in & took care of shit. I, in fact, owned it.

Also, can I say that I love my dentist. He's awesome. My only complaint is that it's a bit difficult to laugh when your mouth is full of metal & someone's squirting water down your throat. After I posited that the drill sounded more like angry pigeons than the cooing of doves he'd promised, he made cooing noises every time he did something that I thought might hurt.

Afterward one of the techs mentioned that Scarlett Johannson was alleged to have recently had one of her wisdom teeth dipped in gold & given to a boyfriend. I said that I ought to take Mr. Massive Cavity (yeah, I looked at 'em after they were out; & yeah, Mr. MC weren't too pretty) & mail it to my ex-boyfriend with a note that says, "Now that I no longer support you financially, dental care is not just a dream". C'mon, it's funny! And disturbing. But funny. And pointless, since I didn't keep 'em anyway.

I did stay home on Friday, but I felt more exhausted than pained. Eh, the whole thing was a lovely excuse to sit on my butt all weekend high on painkillers, knit & watch crap ("Scrubs"; Blades of Glory; The Women (okay, that one's not crap, but actually pretty good, if a bit shrill)). I even broke down & got a coaxial cable on Sunday. It's not as bad as it sounds though - I'm knitting like a madman right now & require accompanying audiovisual stimulation that is not dependent so much on the visual part. Football is actually the perfect program to knit to! I shit you not. Think about it - it's 60 minutes of actual game time that takes 180+ minutes to complete. So, if I knit during all the non-game stuff, that's two solid hours of straight knit-time. It works out wonderfully - I get lots done, & I'm not bored senseless by commercials & all that standing around they do on the field.