welcome, And I'm like

There's a new blog on the block, something I've been rolling around in my psyche.  Now my husband knows my affiinity for describing the DNA of things or people or my state of mind in my own way, whereby I utter things like,  "This song, this song is like if you took Rocky and Bullwinkle and them strapped them down with a suicide vests and told them they have just 3 minutes to live.  The next three minutes, that would be this song."  My new blog, And I'm like attempts to just let that run loose like the madwoman it was born to be.  Its fun, I promise.  Come join and post what you (or it, whatever the "it" is) is like....

Rock, Block

You know, I used to think there was divine providence  humming around around me all the time.  I would catch it, occassionally, like a firefly in July.  I'd be poor, on my last dime, and for no particular reason my parents would send me a hundred dollars.  I'd be stuck in a K-9 cop car, hitching a ride to the nearest gas station with my boyfriend's pot contraband stuffed into my backpack and the dog barking furiously in the backseat and the officer never suspecting.  I'd be suffering a nuclear explosion of fear before a flight takes off and the person next to me showed kindness.  I'd found someone, a friend, who told me once to close my eyes, see comfortable, and open them and look into the mirror in front of me, so I could see what comfortable looks like.  I would find a safety valve friendship who would save me from doing worse to myself.  Divine providence.  A footbridge, not a magic carpet.

The line has been disconnected for me the past 6 months. I've been doing some rearranging, negotiating, and its led to a sort of fog in the air.  I pray it hasn't been chopped, merely unplugged.  I don't see it, therefore it's not there.  And then tonight, by a fluke, which is the preferred delivery method of divine providence, I read something from a gem of a not-very-often-heard-from author quoted in a story I've been reading.  And it reminded me, I may feel deadened, but I'm still here.  I may not feel like writing, but I still feel like I have something to say.  And it winked at my very despair at feeling all of this, which is exactly what I needed. 

"You are a little soul carrying around a corpse." Epictetus


Why, yes.  Thank you for noticing.  With fondest thanks to two question marks.
*completely off the cuff, never read-over, unedited post.  if you don't like it or can't understand it, so sorry.

the currency of hours

a homeless man with a shiny behemoth watch
patchy hair, a turtle smile
I am reminded of the last time I felt rich
like that

making your day suck 9% to 13.25% less, courtesy of PS22

WTF ~ No. 3

Nike believes in miracles, like Jesus rising from the dead and a public that doesn't revel in sex scandals, because it released this commercial of Tiger's deceased father talking to him.

Secret Instructions

Not me, on vacation.

Our family recently had a real family time of it on our family vacation.  Which is to say, for my spouse and me, it was not vacation.  At least, not as Merriam-Webster's defines it:
va·ca·tion (vā kā′s̸hən, və-)
Date: 14th century *
1 : a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission
2 a : a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b : a period of exemption from work granted to an employee

It's definitionally impossible to take a vacation away from being parents when you bring a 3 and 6 year old.  There is no respite or intermission.  The back issues of the Sunday New York Times I lugged, a sign of foolish hope, were promptly appropriated by our offspring, disassembled, folded at confusing angles and re-named "secret instructions".  A dark harbinger, the very act compactly illustrates what happened to my husband and me on our week's vacation:  it was appropriated, disassembled, took on several confusing angles and finally, renamed -- but no longer a secret from us, and instructive, indeed.

On day 2, laboring under the impression our family was like everyone else, we went to the lovely outdoor restaurant at the hotel for dinner.  But I was missing my spouse for this particular dinner, so I was outnumbered.  And my foe are a calculated couple, deftly exploiting every weakness - in this case us being in a nice public place and my being alone.

Things started off squarely enough.  The 6 year old (NKA Master of Disaster, or MoD) asked his little sister to wear his new "mood-color" charm to see "what kind of wish the charm says she should make".

Master of Disaster: "Hold it up on your forehead and see what color it turns....Oh! It turned purple! Purple! Your second favorite color! Purple means you get to make a wish for your family and friends! Do it! Do it now!"

As his excitement builds MoD's voice has gone up 10 decibles and the families and couples around us are intruiged.  The three year old, always looking for an opportunity to get excited, clenches her fists up to her cheeks, closes her eyes, grits her teeth and begins to shake in her wishfulness.

MoD: "Its not enough! Harder! Wish harder!"

The three year old (AKA Little Suge, for her gansta devotion to all things sugar) intensifies her efforts, nearly shaking off her chair.  She looks painfully constipated.  Finally, she releases her pose and grins wide.


A graphic depiction of my sweet daughter, Little Suge.

MoD, ignoring my pleas to lower his voice: "What was it?  What did you wish for?  Oh - you're not supposed to tell me, but it's supposed to be for your family and friends, not for yourself.  So I wish I knew.  Was it for me?  Because my birthday is on Thursday.  So I should get the wish!  I need a wish, you know.  I hope you wished for me,  cuz I know what I need.  I NEED TO STOP PEEING MY BED.  That what the wish should be for.  To STOP ME FROM PEEING MY BED."

Little Suge nods, likely having forgotten altogether what she wished for.  But everyone else around us seems to be paying amused attention.

And on that note, I preemptively decide to take both of them to the bathroom, now, before our food arrives.  Since the bathroom is a trek and an ordeal, and because the MoD has a urinary trigger that is set off whenever a plate of prepared food is first set in front of him.   We go, and upon return we see our entrees being set out.  After situating the kids, cutting food, laying out napkins and pushing in chairs, I entertain the first bite of a really delicious piece of roasted salmon with olives and tomatoes. 

"I needta go pott-tay."  It's Little Suge.  The salmon bite slightly sticks in my lower throat. 

After appropriately threatening the MoD not to dare leave his seat, I take Little Suge to the restroom.  The salmon has cooled slightly, but the sauce still has warmth and the flavor is really good.  I get a second bite in, a third, and the chenin blanc I ordered totally hits the spot as a chaser.  MoD suddenly looks up, eyes blazing, and shouts:

"SHE JUST WHISPERED THE WORD FUCK!"  

The sounds of silverware wafting around us abruptly halt.

~A short history of fuck~
Not a week ago MoD believed he invented the word fuck.  This came out as he laughingly assigned a new nickname to my father during their play, "I will call you Mr. Fuck."  
Me:  "What!"
MoD: "What?"
Me: "What did you say!"
MoD, proud of himself: "Fuck!"
Me:  "What.  Did.  You.  Just.  Say?!!"
MoD, not getting it: "Fuck!"
Me: "WHA - "  Little Suge cuts me off.
Little Suge: "Fuck, fuck, fuck.  He said fuck, Silly!"
After the frenzy that invariably followed, it really was the case that upon a rhyming language game he plays, he invented fuck and rather liked it.  We explained it was horrible, forbidden, never again, yadda yadda. 

And it was.  Until Day 1 of our vacation.  At the child-and-mother-filled hotel pool, new little vacation friends began discussing the "worst thing you can do."
Vacation friend 1:  "The worst thing you can do is not tell your Mom and Dad the truth."
Little Suge: "Nuh-hun.  The worst thing you can do is litter." 
This comes out as "litt-tah." She has a distinct Jersey accent.  We don't know how.
MoD, shouting triumphantly from halfway across the pool: "No way.  The worst thing you can do is say FUCK!" 
We lost our vacation friends after that.
~We now return you to our regularly scheduled trainwreck.~

As the last consonant dies down I've already got his chin in a vise grip and I'm whispering murderously into his mouth.  I'm in the bad mother vortex.  If I make a scene, I'm making it worse for everyone to witness.  If I don't make a scene, I condone this display.  And anyway, fuck's already out there, so I've already lost.  After promising that I will wash his mouth out with soap as soon as we get back to the room, I sink back and take my fourth bite of salmon, defeated. 

"I gotta go potty." It's the MoD.  He at least has the good sense to sound a little sheepish.  And he hasn't even eaten a single bite of pizza yet.  I can't leave Little Suge by herself, so we all go.  The third time in less than 10 minutes.  

When we get back, the sauce on the salmon has congealed.  I swallow a third of my wine in one go and try to put myself back together.  The MoD immediately starts to wriggle in his chair.

"My stomach feels weird.  I think I'm going to throw up.  I think - no - I am, I am going to throw up.  I don't feel good.  I need to leave.  Yes, I need to throw up!  I'm going to throw up! I feel sick! Really, really sick!"

And that crackle in the air is the restlessness from the other patrons that they've had enough of our sideshow.   It crossed over from amusing to embarrassing to white trash.  We probably don't get out much, muses the subliminal crackle.  Even the good-natured single lady with her novel and her appetizer and her wine has passed from "I empathize" to "You-and-I-are-nothing-alike."

But I know the MoD, and I know he's not sick, definitely not throw-up sick.  I feel like I've somehow triggered a sleeper cell:  it's ephermeral, deadly, hard to identify and even harder to thwart.  I'm working in unfamiliar terrain, I'm down a General, and I don't have the right maps to respond to this turn in strategy.  But I know it IS one.

So I persist. "Mellow out, MoD.  Just eat what you want, and let Mommy finish her food.  Mommy needs to eat.  Enjoy yourself." 

I should have never uttered the first two, nor the last two words of this speech.  Its not taken as friendly advice; it's taken as a directive.  And the MoD just simply seemed unable to take directives this evening.

"No! No, Mommy.  You don't understand.  I'm going to throw up at the table.  I am. My stomach feels weird. It's all weird and its going to throw up right here, at the table.  I need to go back! I need to leave! I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm SICK."

I had a vision of that bomb chocolate cake with a warm liquid chocolate center.  It's really all I could think of for a split second.  The kind of thing you order when you go out to restaurants.  On vacation. I clung to it.  I immediately grabbed the waitress, motioned to the kids, asked her to have room service send over one of those, siphoned my wine and advised the waitress to bring the remainder of Little Suge's dinner along with my dessert.   Carrying her, kicking and crying, MoD dramatically heaving breaths and clutching his stomach, we exit.

Three minutes later, we're back at the room.  MoD immediately heads over to his new Lego toy (it's his birthday on Thursday you know) and starts to play with it. 

"You said you were sick."


"I'm starting to feel better now."


"Nuh-uh.  No way.  Now you get in that bathroom and BE sick. You insisted you were going to throw up.  Get in that bathroom and if you don't have to throw up then you sit down on the toilet and don't you get up til I say."


"Can I take my Lego?"


"NO!"

He skirts by me, but not before grabbing his Nintendo DS. 

"No DS! You're too sick for DS!"


"But I'm starting to feel better now. Its weird. I just...feel better." 

He's genuinely convincing.  Like I'll believe the miracle of his recovery.  Like I believed he was ever really sick in the first place.

And when that warm chocolate liquid cake showed up with the vanilla ice cream?  I let him out of the bathroom.  I sat Little Suge on my lap and fed her bites and he watched on.  The vacation dessert disappeared right in front of him without an offer to share coming his way.  I have my own set of secret instructions, you see. 

It was the one successful offensive in an otherwise lost battle.

A Shiny Little Reflection of Faith

Well, I thought this was unexpectedly lovely.  It's neither sappy nor prostelytizing.  It just is.  Enjoy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/fashion/21love.html

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Situation ~ No. 2

It's the Magical Mystery Tour for felines!  It's a pilot program for mega-harshers graduating from the University of Timothy Leary to learn how to film commercials. 

This makes eating cat food seem so otherworldly and id-releasing that I want to chuff it.  On the other hand, if people see you picking this up at the store now, they're going to know that you're the retro-acid-culture-neo-modern-cheeseball that turned your office into a cat shrine.

Friskies.  The Harry Potter of cat food.

Elective Procedures

I can't decide if this is a final clamping down
a desperate suture on the main artery
if there is no outrage
the tree bare
shake but nothing to show for
the still air.

Tunnel into the dirt
to locate the roots
but the act is now
distant archeology
your pockets of treasures
sown all together
crinkled and smudged
(but no less beloved).

An Intimacy is extinguished
when an anguish is razed
before and after,
initiate and haze,
these airy tumbleweeds
a taupe equanimity
another member
for this deadened sorority.

Between 6pm and 8:30pm

I had an unscheduled dinner with an uninvited man who is an acquaintance of an acquaintance who told me that he is writing a book on sports nutrition;
is a medical doctor completing his residency at a prestigious hospital;
is a Hare Krishna devotee;
is a mystic;
is getting into television and radio;
[At this point, the acquaintance who wanted nothing to do with the acquaintance we were seated with has deserted us for the night.]
is able to leave his body at will during meditation (he goes to the astral plane - I've heard it's nice there);
is starting a non profit where he will take in food, prepare it, and homeless and poor will come and eat
Me: "Oh, so, like a soup kitchen."
Him: "No, I definitely wouldn't call it that."
Me: "Right."
Him: "A fellow devotee claims that once the Krishnas take in food and prepare it, it becomes sanctified, blessed, and has a cleansing effect when you eat it."
Me: "So it's like an inadvertent spa treatment."
Him: "Sort of."
Me: "As a medical doctor, do you believe in the existence of sanctified food that cleanses you because it is sanctified?"
Him: "Yes, because I've been cleansed...I'm also in sales and marketing."
Me: "I'm not surprised."
Him: "I sell Amway. Have you ever heard of it?"
Me: "Um-hm."
Him: "Do you think sales is evil?"
Me: "Depends on what you sell. I don't care enough about what people buy, so I would be a horrible sales person."
Him: "Well, I used to not care either. But then I took some courses, 2 years worth, and now I'm completely brainwashed...."
Me: "....by the Krishna's."
Him: "No. By Amway."
And scene.

I was corralled into this person's universe outside of a contemporary performance show where a troupe of dancers in intricate masks and costumes portrayed a beating, a rape and the stages of recovery and survivorship.  All in blacklight.  Set to modern music.  After the show one of the dancers explained how this was actually her personal story.

The quality and magnificence of the art at the show far exceeded the fantastical nature of the conversation after it. 

A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Situation ~ No. 1

The premier of the 'WTF' series. To qualify, things must strike a hilarious or ludicrous chord.  For your amusement, edification, or as a cautionary tale.  Or all three. 

Iggy Pop and his dummy yuk it up selling car insurance in a commercial. *

From self-mutiliating rock-n-roll dervish to advocate of lower premiums and great coverage . 

I so want one of these.  Sitting magnificently in my office chair in my stead while I go see The Hurt Locker. 

*Thanks to stereogum.com which posted this freeze frame.

Don't Fix My Smile, Life Is Long Enough

Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (is it sincere, or just desperate?), I'm hoping the Freelance Whales don't mind that I five-fingered this post's title from a lyric in their amazing song, Generator ^ Second Floor.  And they shouldn't, cuz I'm doing it to pimp them hard, right here, right now. 

If Death Cab for Cutie, Ra Ra Riot, M. Ward, Grey Eye Glances and the synthesizer guy from Depeche Mode circa 1983 (see album Construction Time Again) got together to bake a cake to welcome the new neighbor to the 'hood, and if that cake had been decorated with silly squiggles of Vampire Weekend and topped with a folk-inspired candle, that cake would be Freelance Whales.  And there would be impolite swipes in the frosting before you even cut it, cuz its charmingly good. 

The whole album is a lovely little meet and greet, and you want to wrap the band, their watering can, weird breathalyzer instrument I can't name, glockenspiel and all, in your pocket.  In their song, Hannah, singer Judah politely asks 'Do me this solid if you would pretty lady, grab a martini and meet me on the balcony. I prepared a light show, you could fake a melody, we argue over where and when the cymbal hits should be....and if you're partial to the night sky, if you're vaguely attracted to rooftops...'  

Why, I never thought you'd ask. Yes, yes, and yes.

Thus I pimp mightily the Whales' release, Weathervanes, but I also pound my chest to display a certain musical dominance.  Me and a friend discovered them long before they became "album of the week" on the vanguard alt radio station we rely on.  And when I heard the "album of the week" news wafting through my car speakers last Sunday, my rejoinder shot out, a cannonball of smugness: "I got to them first, fuckers!" 

And though the cover album art looks like a cross-stitch pattern your great aunt bought for you when you were 8 and still following the Mennonite faith, there is something sublime about a backstory whereby a band that just started playing in late 2008 on street corners and subway stops can now transport you from the comfort of your very own ipod.  Joyfully. Effortlessly. 

What makes you pound your musical chest? Give it up!

A Talisman for 2010, Philadelphia Style

There's something inherently redeemable about wild abandon.  And every year, the city of Philadelphia redeems - yes, redeems itself hosting the Mummer's parade on New Year's Day.

Officially in its 109th year, it offers the full spectrum:  breathtaking, intricate costumes, props and floats; skilled music, dance and acting performances; gleeful foolishness; warmhearted public ambassadorship; profuse public drunkeness and unbridled fuckery. 


In short, it offers the total package of art and entertainment. 
For no charge. 
On the street. 
I daresay, it's magnificent.


The Mummer's first divisions - the comics, the wenches - these folks solidly encompass the latter half of the things I listed above.  (Mostly) Men in garish theme dresses, painted beyond recognition, clutching Bud Lights and each other, dancing in hapazard circles down the street with parasols. 

When you see it, you forget if you've had an unremarkable year. You feel, despite yourself, that this is a good omen, a best possible start.  Woe as you are and jaded though you may be, who can possibly feel anything other than amusement when this guy's coming at you?

It is good not only because it's glee busking you in the face, or because a subset of the populace not especially trained to entertain you, is in fact, letting down their guard to entertain you....but because there's beauty in the tradition of it, in simply persisting. 

Mini-you's learning to walk the walk.

It's all the more delightful when the tradition is carried out not because of religious dogma, family dysfunction, social mores or self-importance, but instead is followed because it produces fellowship and joy (and gleeful foolishness, warmhearted public ambassadorship, public drunkeness and unbridled fuckery.)

So while I struggled this past week with prioritizing all the things I resolve not to do (take things too serious, arrive late, act like an asshat) and all the things I now resolve to start (being more brave, opening up emotionally, flossing regularly), I took a second to think about the unbroken things that I already do, the traditions, if you will ...the things that, net-net, are just fine already.  And for a shiny, cold, Broad Street moment, it was all right. 

Thanks, you's Mummers.