US Grant Park

Portland has been park planning ever since it commissioned a survey in 1905, the results of which found that parks are essential to the quality of urban life (duh). Currently Portland has the most green acres per capita of any city in the U.S. Whatever that means, all I know is, PDX has got itself an official buttload of parks. A very long time ago I made it a mission to visit one a week until I'd seen all of them. Then...um...I stopped. And now...um...I'm starting again. Whatever! I can be as damned capricious as suits me. I am subject to the whims of none save my own.

Today I trudged over to US Grant Park, located in NE Portland. The park's 19 acres were acquired in 1922. Its namesake visited our fair burg three times in his life, no mean feat in the days before widespread train travel, but its best-known feature is its Beverly Cleary sculpture garden, established in 1995 & featuring statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins & Ribsy, fictional characters who all lived in NE Portland & frequented Grant Park. Time has swallowed nearly all of my memories of the books, but I loved me some Ramona Quimby when I was a child. However! I must admit, I find the statue sort of...disturbing. Like one of those stoic eyeless busts commemorating Roman emperors, only she's a grinning lifeless kid.


Eh. The park itself is very nice indeed, & if I lived closer, I would probably go there more. Except it has an off-leash area, so it's probably just stuffed to the gills with dogs in nice weather. My bones are cold, as it freakin' hailed throughout my two-mile walk over, but it was worth it because the sun came out for the half hour I was at the park & sun + precipitation = sparkles. I got several lovely pictures of the tennis court too.

Merry Christmas!

(There's a cute story involving me & the bicycle which deftly exemplifies the mind's capacity to experience wonder that defies knowledge.)

Folks Get Down In The Sunshine

23.12.2007 theme song:

Eddie Kendricks - "Date with the Rain"

It rained all day & night. At least from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. It would have been a beautiful day to sit at home drinking tea & touching my new books. But no! My day was a three-mile walk to Northwest to acquire froufy Portlandia Christmas presents & then dinner & bars. It wasn't a date so much as assault. Blasted rain.

However, today I awoke to a pale white thing & mocking shards of blue sky piercing the vast canopy of gray. I even saw shadows for about 20 minutes. Which, in December's Oregon, passes for so much sunshine. Therefore!

24.12.2007 theme song:

Roy Ayers - "Everybody Loves the Sunshine"

Proof Pudding

Look! I can win at bowling! At least two games in a row! That makes three games I've won, ever. I think that merits a big ol' w00t!!!1!!1!




*Sniff*. I'm so proud of me. Um, I'm the kraut if you couldn't figure. Thanks to the mick for the pics.

Touch My Tummy & I Light Up!

Oh my. LIGHT-UP BATHTUB TOYS arrived yesterday on my doorstep. AKA "Disco Dinos". I lurve you, Skunk Keeler. They make my insides squiggly. Look!:


Yeah, I got out to grab my camera because they're so wonderful. So what? New rubber duckies + bath bomb from Lush (oh, sweet Lush) + leftover yet still bubbly prosecco from last night + [redacted for the sake of decency] = best Saturday bath EVER.

Also: remember when Ryan Adams was good? I didn't until I listened to a CD I made for a friend ages ago. And this song came on:

Whiskeytown - "Here's to the Rest of the World"

So wistful & gauzy yellow afternoon bar. I was compelled to run out & buy Faithless Street & Strangers Almanac straightaway.

Last but not least: I've got the whole "Dae Jang Geum" series to get me through the sopping wet of Oregon winter! It's s'posed to be kinda like "Iron Chef" crossed with a soap, all set in 16th century Korea. I feel like it exists solely for my benefit. Whoo hoo! Thanks ever so much to Albert.

Watch Out! Girl Genius At Work!

Many moons ago, in the wilds of western Massachusetts, I chipped one of my front teeth in a friendly tussle over a bottle of beer. Obviously, I had a fake tooth-part (no, I don't know the technical term) installed - I may have been raised in Scio, OR but that doesn't mean I have to look like it, dammit. And so, all was well.

Until last night, when I did something so embarrassingly stupid that I refuse to describe it. And knocked out said fake tooth-part.

Nice job, me. Way to go. Let's just make that whole teeth thing cost an even grand for 2007. Sweet! (21.12 EDIT: Apparently my dentist has a "buy five fillings get a fake tooth-part for free" deal. And he was able to see me yesterday. Excellent.)

The moral of the story is: I am forcing myself to go to sleep tonight. Like a normal person. Eight Six hours, at least, maybe more. All I am doing tonight is watching my freakin' "Lost" [21.12 EDIT: & Helvetica, a truly crappy documentary that makes an interesting subject dull]. No more staying up so late I'm afraid to go to sleep because I might not wake up! No more insane ventures, no more mad projects!

In short, no more tomfoolery.

At least until the weekend. Then I can try pulling out shelf pegs with my teeth at 4:30 in the morning to my heart's content. (Yeah, that's right, I said it. I confess.)

Blessed Art Thou; Or, It's Totally Your Lucky Day!

Gather the blankets & glasses of milk, bring the cookies if you got 'em, because it's time for a little story. (Mandy, stop pulling my hair & settle down!) Go back, back, waaaaay back here, to the big bang, aka the genesis of this here blog-thing. Following the standard "Hey world friends! This is my blog! Hey!" post, the very first thing I wrote about was a filmmaker by the name of Phil Solomon. The words were few, succinct (I used to try!) & heartfelt (to the max, Phil. Heh. I've hardly begun to exhaust my repertoire). What I did not mention was that I had actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Solomon on more than one occasion, in more than one state (& I use "state" with more than one meaning, naturally), over the course of several years. I even chauffeured him to TJ's house - that would be Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, for those who aren't hip to the C-ville slang - in a pick-up in, I think, 2004. Alas! sadly, that had been the last of it.

Until very recently, when Mr. Solomon found my feeble little post about him & left me a wonderful comment, which gave me a case of the warm fuzzies you wouldn't believe. Subsequently, memories were jogged & communications (re-)established. All to your benefit, friends, as I've laid my grubby little paws on clips from some of his films!

Now, I realize that I am slightly inclined toward hyperbole. I am simply helpless in the face of that with which I am enthralled, be it positively or negatively. My words can be a minefield of superlatives. However! If you took the whole of every aggrandizing statement I've ever made, every command & must & implore & love & amazing & so forth, & you put them in a mortar & mashed them to a splendidly redolent paste, the resulting bouquet would still not do these films justice.

My limited mind knows not how to provide a better introduction. Tell me you believe me. Better yet, just watch the clips. I provide them to you out of love. (And if you love me, you'll watch them, bitches.) Yes, they are necessarily but pale ghosts of the films entire; but after all, as Double Exposure so well put it, "Ten percent of something/It beats one hundred percent of nothing at all"!

The Passage of the Bride

Clepsydra

The Exquisite Hour

Nocturne

Remains To Be Seen

Seasons....

The Secret Garden

What's Out Tonight is Lost

Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes

Psalm III: Night of the Meek

The Snowman

Psalm II: Walking Distance

Happy-Makers 2007 12 19

(You'll probably have to make the pictures bigger to get the full effect here.)

Why I love my video store:


There are also three shelves of "Demons, Devils & Their Worshipers".

Why I love my scary neighbors:


Yeah. That's Santa Claus. On a motorcycle. I know it's a terrible picture, but they are my scary neighbors, so I didn't want to get too close or use a flash, even if I made sure their lights were out. I never thought I'd miss tacky Christmas decorations; but I did. And they filled the void! I like to stand on my porch & ponder Bad-Ass Santa.

God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance

Warning: the CDs be snug in their new, shelf-y homes. Which means I've got them all at my fingertips. Which, in turn, means I'm listening to stuff I nearly forgot I had. And could possibly be posting about it in unseemly amounts in the days &/or weeks to come.

But I don't think anything else I own could possibly ever come close to the song I just rediscovered, from the Soul Jazz release The World of Arthur Russell:

Arthur Russell - "In the Light of the Miracle"

I have never struggled so fiercely for a material thing in my life as for this compilation. So I'm not sure how I failed to realize before this that "In the Light of the Miracle" is it. The song. The one for which my feet in their red shoes will dance off into the forest without me (in a somewhat sunnier take on the tale). And when I rejoin them, it will be the song playing in my eternal disco, along with MFSB's "Love is the Message" (the Tom Moulton mix, ideally). Now that's an idea for a mix CD: the songs to which I want to dance in the forever. Hmm.

If your toes don't generally get to tapping, it's still a lovely piece of work. But you cannot truly understand what I mean unless you dance with it.

My propensity for delivering complicated drunken monologues on the beauty of disco & its social implications inches ever closer to notorious. At the risk of skipping like a scratched record, just listen to this song & try then to tell me that disco isn't worlds more than white polyester kitsch.

(Mr. Russell is experiencing quite the posthumous renaissance: my quick google search revealed no less than a documentary & a biography (by Tim Lawrence, which makes it extra exciting), both due in 2008. As for that which is already published, it's all a bit prosaic in light of the music itself, but this New Yorker article by Sasha Frere-Jones isn't bad.)

365 Little Days

It has been a tiny bit more than a year since I moved into my apartment with about three pieces of furniture & little else. Although I still feel I've an awfully long way to go, I have to admit I've also come an equally long way. Example:



I'm going to take this also as an occasion to state for the record that, yes, Heather, "if anything happens to me", you can have the Totoro clock (seen to the left of the couch there). As a surprise bonus, I will also leave you my copy of Trouble in Paradise, since you're the first person I've shown it to who thought it as absolutely funny as I.

I'll consider other requests.

Someone Tell Me What I'm Doing Wrong

Dear Miranda Lambert,

Please stop reading my diary. It's PRIVATE.

Miranda Lambert - Guilty In Here

Sincerely,
April

P.S. My past-life alternate-universe diary is ALSO PRIVATE.

Miranda Lambert - Gunpowder & Lead

Bringing You Down, Down, Down On Your Brazen Knees

I want a boy who will dress up like this for me! I s'pose I'd be willing to forego the socks & shoes (although they are utterly adorable). The sparkly shirt, however, would be non-negotiable.

*Sigh*. My dear Patrick Wolf. I want to make out with your songs. I would enter into matrimony with "Augustine". I would pop out "Accident & Emergency"'s babies like so many ping-pong balls in Asian sex clubs. And my, er, rather derogatory feelings toward marriage & babies both are secrets ill-kept. (Not to digress, but I suppose I feel that those ever so noble social conventions are not negative so much as they're pervasively useless, at least insofar as concerns your humble narrator.)

No joke, The Magic Position is easily one of my favorite albums ever. I haven't so single-mindedly listened to an album since 2000. But of course, it makes complete sense. The album itself is stuffed with joy & gloom in like amounts. It's completely cinematic, my definition of which includes both lushly orchestrated, whirling soundscapes & lyrics laden with imagery. Anyway, I can't explain it any better than I put it in a recent email: The album entire sings in the key of me.

"And now come the tears, heavy and hot/As it becomes clear, this is all we got/As I hold you to my bed/Like a cancer or a curse/Be my loving nurse/As we fall back into the impossible dream"

"Now deep in a forest/Losing all thought of spring/And nothing can help me remember/And I'm going nowhere fast/A darker day has holed at last/Deep in a dream I set the calmness to spinning"

"'Cause out of all the people I've known/The places I've been/The songs I have sung/The wonders I've seen/Now that the dreams are all coming true/Who is the one that leads me on through/It's you/Who puts me in the magic position, darling now/You put me in the magic position/To live, to learn, to love in the major key"

"We could go to the cinema/Big effects and big name stars/And we can go to that private view/But darling these days my favorite view is you"

Oh!

Because Really I Just Don't BUY Enough Stuff

After getting my DVD shelves up on the wall last week, I was alarmed & saddened to discover that I have far, far fewer DVDs than I had imagined. Apparently the attrition rate during the war was much higher than it looked when the DVDs were in boxes.

Although I was glad to see that the frivolous titles have been kept to a minimum (meaning that of the DVDs I own, the majority are ones which I truly love), & I am happy that in April-land Clueless sits next to The Conformist, as Mean Girls sidles up alongside Mulholland Drive, I realized also how very very few of my actual favorite movies I own. Not that I don't absolutely adore the ones I do own, but I'm talking about the ones that I respond to most on an emotional basis. The special ones. For me, there's a fine but clear delineation betwixt films that touch my head & films that go beyond & take up residence in my heart. I mean, I admire Citizen Kane twelve ways to Sunday, but I don't love it. I've got a few of 'em on hand, to be sure - Wings of Desire. Au Hasard Balthazar. A Little Princess (want early evidence of Alfonso Cuaron's cinematic talents? Skip the tepid Great Expectations adaptation & start here. Damn thing makes me bawl like a baby every time I see it & it's deathly gorgeous to boot).

Thanks to evil Amazon & my temporary delusion of disposable cash, I have attempted to remedy this situation in my own small way.


First: I finally broke down & bought the Criterion Collection release of Naked. Seeing as I was moved to actually email them the title as a suggestion several years ago, I figured since they lived up to their end of things by actually releasing it, I'd better pony up & buy the damn thing already. Out of all the trenchant & cutting things said in that film, this is my favorite, courtesy of Johnny:

"Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it, so now you just want cheap thrills and like plenty of them, and it don't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are, as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored. "

Words to live by.


Second: Yay! It Happened One Night! Yay! One of my all-time most favoritest movies ever. The film that killed off men's undershirt sales because of the scene pictured above. The first film to sweep the Big 5 at the Oscars (picture, director, screenplay, actor & actress- only One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest & The Silence of the Lambs have done it since). The movie no one wanted to make at the studio for which no one wanted to work - the two leads were forced into it. Featuring the lovely Claudette Colbert. Also Clark Gable (no especial favorite of mine, truth be told). Frank Capra at his finest. I've adored this film madly ever since I was 16, so it's about time I actually had it at my permanent disposal.


Third: Oh, those Germans. It was bothering me that insofar as (1) I love Werner Herzog & (2) I spent an inordinate amount of time watching his films in college, the only title I actually owned of his was Grizzly Man. A most excellent film indeed, but hardly the one upon which his international renown was built. I remembered that there exists a boxed set of all the work Mr. Herzog did with Klaus Kinski (& if you don't know anything about their relationship, well, I heartily recommend delving into it. Kinski on Herzog: "I wish he would catch the plague, more than ever." Herzog on Kinski: "We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder". More quote fun here.). Amazon's got it for 50% off list price - that's six titles for $45 - what works out to $7.50 each. And being a compendium of his work with Kinski, of course it's some of his absolute finest stuff - Aguirre, the Wrath of God (although I think the German title is far more fierce-sounding: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes); Fitzcarraldo; Woyzeck; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Cobra Verde; and the nonfiction film Herzog made about Kinski, called My Best Fiend. I think I'm most excited about revisiting Fitzcarraldo, although I think Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror & Herzog's "re-imagining" make for a spectacular double feature - every time I see either of them, my admiration for the actor portraying the title character (Max Shreck in the former; Kinski, naturally, in the latter) grows leaps & bounds. They're both absolutely astonishing.


Fourth: My neighbor Totoro, To-to-ro. Totoro, To-to-ro. Heh! I waited a long while for My Neighbor Totoro to be released as it deserves: wide-screen, with the original Japanese audio track. Previously it was available only in a full-screen English-dubbed version. Now, finally, it comes back to my lovin' arms, more glorious than ever.

A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Hee hee! I'm the world's biggest alphabetizing dork. Seriously. I love alphabetizing. It gives me great happiness. Creating order out of chaos in my own small way. The pleasure, however brief, of basking in the comforting beauty of the finite & graspable. The Feeling of getting something accomplished skipping hand in hand down the path with the Sensation of mental relaxation. I only wish my life provided me more frequent opportunities to indulge. I suspect that secretly this is why I'm letting my CD organization take days & days & days - because after the CDs, I've only the records, & then all the fun goes away.

No. That's not true. Don't lie to yourself, Self. If I'd had my druthers that shit would have been done by Friday. The 20-hour class'n'test combo & various social commitments I had last week are what kept me from finishing. But now that I've caught up on sleep - I will undoubtedly be amazed for months that I slept from 2:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday - well, I don't think anything can hold me back.

The (1st) step is categorizing. This is easy. I have Disco/Funk, Electronic & Everything Else (I used to try to be all categorical with the Everything Else too, but I found that all that meant was I spent more time looking for things because I couldn't remember as what they had been classified). The (2nd) is my beloved alphabetizing. The (3rd) is chronological arrangement within the alphabetical structure, which is also easy - any artist whose work is owned in sufficient quantity as to warrant chronological arrangement is most likely an artist with whose discography I have a fair amount of familiarity.

Except, for some reason, Fila Brazilia - I can never remember whether Power Clown or Luck Be a Weirdo Tonight comes first.

Merry Christmas, Me

Since this evening past I spent more hours devising the following scheme than sleeping, I am generously passing the pain on to you.

I've decided that my Christmas present to myself is going to be finishing up the record room. As my loyal reader may recall, I recently-ish painted the walls up there. And never did the rest of what needed doing. BUT. I am finally utterly fed up at having all of my CDs & records & DVDs in boxes. Even if it's only been a year & a half. SO. Thanks to the miracle of the Christmas bonus, I am going to get my ass in gear & do the following:

(1) Paint the floor! Unfortunately or fortunately, depending, this is absolutely without question the first thing I have to do. It's going to be a fair bit of work, which may or may not involve sanding the whole floor &/or primer, but will definitely involve some serious cleaning, painting & multiple coats of polyurethane. It will probably take me days.

(2) Finalize my media storage plans. I think I have, but it's hard to tell. Last night I stayed up waaaay too late taking measurements & I decided that the record room is clearly the most ridiculous room ever in the history of the world. Check it:

All the height weirdness is due to the fact that nearly every one of the eight walls are angled in totally bizarro ways. To wit:


(3) I figured out that only the right part of wall 1, plus walls 2 (pictured above) & 5, are usable for shelving (I'm putting a table for the record players in front of the windows, eventually). Which means that contrary to my clever notions, only my records are able to be shelved in the record room. I've decided that three of these Expedit bookcases (turned on the side, of course) are going to have to do the trick. Hopefully, I can fit all the records on them. Hopefully.

(4) Since the CDs apparently aren't going in there anymore, they will have to go in the actual loft, against these walls:


Which are also problematic, as you can see. Ignore the fact that I'm not done painting the loft, either. I'm thinking my best bet here is to go with four of the Benno CD towers in silver (or possibly red, depending on how it compares to the red I will (one day) paint the loft) & keep my fingers crossed that they hold all my CDs. I mean, 180 x 4 = 720, sooo...I hope that's enough. I don't know. I've got boxes & boxes & more boxes of them & I haven't exactly done a thorough count.

(5) And then what of my DVDs?!?! There are far fewer of those than anything else, at least. Ultimately I determined that they will simply have to go in the living room. Appearances to the contrary, there actually is an unphotographed angle in my apartment, but they will be going on the wall above & to the right of the buffet:


I'm going to grab six of these Lerberg wall shelves in dark grey; turned vertically, they will hold DVDs. Ideally, I will only need five of them, & then I can put the sixth horizontally on the wall near my stereo, to hold whatever CDs I have in current rotation.

Bleech. The only thing I can do right now are the DVD shelves, because in a matter of hours I will be in hardcore insurance dork mode through Saturday. Luckily, the Sheraton is right near the IKEA, so I'm gonna go pick up the shelves tonight!

Sadness.

When will it end? A succinct update:

1) Trying to figure out how to stop paying a loan when the object of that loan is defunct, without getting bad shit on my credit report. Have spoken with three different Wells Fargo departments & left a message with the last, the Total Loss Department. Am calling them tomorrow if they don't call me.

2) Trying to figure out how to not get in trouble with Wells Fargo over my insurance. The car is totaled - what's the point in paying for insurance? Still, my insurance company has not canceled or even notified Wells Fargo of the loss.

3) I need some documents from my insurance company in order to file a stop gap claim. The woman I spoke to regarding my insurance at Wells Fargo told me to ride those stop gap people like a harpy straight outta hell (okay, she didn't say that...I'm paraphrasing), because they royally fucked her daughter over when she totaled her car. So now I'm worried & I'm gonna ride my auto damage adjuster like a harpy until I get the documents I need to file with the stop gap people. And oh! they will live to rue the day, if they try to screw with me.

4) Just found out that I was supposed to file an accident report with the Oregon DMV within 72 hours of the accident. Whoopsy. Also I have to fill out an Application for Salvage Title. Sweet!

5) I still have to get my shit out of the dead car. The salvage yard is only open M-F 8:30 to 4:30, & it's all the way out by the airport, so my plan is to go there Wednesday, because my latest insurance dork-fest class starts that day & is only a few miles away.

6) Speaking of the dead car, I found a special treat on the Geico website today:


It's so tragic! Also, don't forget: I am driving between 5 to 10 mph when this happens. I really, really wish I knew how fast that other guy was going. Also whether he even had his fucking headlights on.

Boompty Boomp!

I clearly need more friends who like house music.

Derrick fucking Carter is playing at my house, dammit! It's funny, 'cause I've definitely missed out on a lot of DJs around here - Mark Farina, DJ Dan, etc. - that I really do love (well, I gotta say, I stopped with DJ Dan after about six or seven CDs, because, um, they actually do all sound the same). Anyway, generally speaking, while I enjoy listening to them, most house mixes are too damn fast for my tired old body to even contemplate keeping up with in a live setting. So I've just kind of skipped 'em.

But...I mean...it's DERRICK CARTER. House Music Legend (tm). He's boompty, not "boom-chk-boom-chk-boom-chk". Shit, he created the boompty boomp. He's got a track about friends & tater tots, people! He's just adorable & I love him madly. And the show's only fifteen dollars.


Sigh. I don't really want to go alone, but I just might have to. Damn PDX indie kids.

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.

Rendered Speechless

Amanda Palmer played at Berbati's Pan last night. Since I still haven't forgotten the occasion on which Los Amigos Invisibles started their show right on time with nary an opening act, I made sure to show up as close to 9:30 p.m. as I could. Shit, I even drove.

So naturally, there were opening acts. The first was a rather twee-sounding five-piece from, I'm guessing, Seattle. They sounded lovely & all, but I think my problem with them is aptly summed up with my reaction to the girl singer - I found her Feist-ish & irritatingly adorable. Like, she was really cute, but looked kinda like she sweats tea & has a ruffled bedskirt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but Amanda Palmer could have made that girl crumple just by looking at her. Also, I always get a little pissy when all the people playing instruments are dudes, & the chick is just up there singing. You probably wouldn't snap in half if you picked up a guitar, sweetie. Or hell, a tambourine. An odd choice of band. I didn't catch their name, unfortunately.

After they were finished, I went off to the smoking area of Berbati's Pan. While I was standing there, Amanda Palmer came out of the bathroom! We had a weird moment! She walked in my general direction & then looked at me & we locked eyes. I felt like she expected me to say something, but literally the only things I could think of were "I love you" & "You're shorter than I would have guessed". Both of which seemed completely inappropriate in totally different ways, so I managed to choke them back & limit myself to a sort of half-smile. Probably the same one that shows up on my Oregon driver's license, making me look retarded. AWESOME.

I thoroughly enjoyed the next act, Estradasphere. You haven't lived until you've heard Slash's guitar solo from "Sweet Child O' Mine" on the violin, let me tell you. They're actually really awesome, but this was probably the funniest thing that happened all night:


(Okay, so that's not the performance from last night, but close enough. I saw the video & the accordion player's "sign language" interpretation.)

They stayed on stage to accompany Palmer's set. What can I say? She really is fabulous. Last night she was wearing a lovely mocha-colored coat dress, the bottom half unbuttoned, & worn striped stockings with a black garter belt & black rufflebutt panties. (For the encore she lost the coat dress & added a Black Sabbath t-shirt.) Apparently, she's recording a solo album with, *cough*, Ben Folds (I'm trying to not hold it against you, darlin'), but she's also up in Seattle recording some stuff for it with Estradasphere. It's not a tour - as she said at one point, they'd been on tour for a whole eight hours. I'm pretty sure it's just 'cause she likes Portland. She hinted vaguely at it when she said, "This city is fucking awesome." The show overall was delightfully disorganized. She did a couple of Brecht covers (I've always liked Brecht a great deal - it's Brechtianism I tend to find overly pedantic & dull). She also played the astronaut song that she played almost exactly a year ago at the Crystal Ballroom, & it made me cry again. I know. So weird. Turns out that she had actually written the song the day of the Crystal Ballroom show.


(Again, not the performance from last night.)

Also, they did a cover of a Madonna song (one from the first album, can't remember the name), & she got down off the stage & touched my arm! I think Amanda Palmer is in love with me. Imagine the possibilities. We could run off together & play My Little Ponys & shop for garter belts & stockings. It would be fierce. It would be girly.

It would be beautiful.