ANTM Cycle 16: Ace of Spades

Sometimes I look at this thing we've got called American pop culture and it's sort of like walking into the house of a lifetime smoker who died sitting his armchair, all the windows shut and the tobacco resin tears dripping down the faded kitchen walls, everything coated with this burnt orange sheen, even the ceramics his wife left behind in the credenza. So at first glance, everything is gross, right? Disgusting. But the chandelier in the hallway, the tea set, the kitchen clock, they're not made of gross nasty smoke puke. They are just temporarily covered in it. And sure, most of the stuff in the house is going to have to be thrown out, or burned. But some of it has got to be worth cleaning. If you've got the patience to stand there scrubbing chandelier crystals for hours.

Some of us do.

This show, however, is not a chandelier. And last week, I did not have time to stand around with grease cleaner eating away my knuckles. But it was an important episode last week, because my friend James Asmus was actually ON ANTM. Which is sort of AMAZING. When I heard about it, I literally jumped a little in my skin, like Christmas. I mean, it shouldn't be that great. This is what he does for a living after all. Well, I mean, this and other things. Like writing comic books and plays. And being funny. When I think about it, I kind of hate that boy a little. But one year Tara and James and I sat around eating a 5 pound Ghiradelli bar we bought him for his birthday with a hammer, watching Kids in the Hall. That sort of experience means loyalty for life.

Just not enough loyalty to stay at home that night. That's what DVRs are for after all. It's not a chandelier. It's not a chandelier. It's not a chandelier.

I sent James a couple of questions about his experience on the show, cause seriously, aren't you curious?


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What did you actually go on to ANTM to do?

I was hired (due to my improv background) as a plant to mess with the girls when they had to 'meet the public'. Specifically, my job was to hit on all of them and act as creeptastic as possible. Which is soundly within my wheelhouse.

What do you think you SHOULD have been hired to do?

Honestly? I was pretty happy with this gig. I would feel terrible if I had to prank innocent people on the street, but making sheltered, arrogant teenage girls scared was entirely fun. So, if anything, I'd say it would have been better to make them do a 'sexy' photo shoot - only to have it be with a completely un-model-like guy (me) who still does creepy and inappropriate things during the shoot. That way, you trap them even further into the nightmare.

How tall is Tyra really?

She wasn't there! That was the biggest disappointment. Though Ms. J did compliment my ruthlessness in putting some girls through the ringer. So that was nice.

Which girl is the oddest looking one in person?
Some of the eliminated girls were still around. (I guess because their friends would 'know' the outcome if they were back home after 3 weeks.) And Dominique is even more jarring in person. But of the remaining girls? ...Molly? I had the hardest time picturing her as a model.

I feel like the girls get wrapped tight in reality blankets during the show. Is it like all secret service up in that place?
They were escorted in and buffered by *dozens* of people. But once the challenge was over, most crew whisked off with the 'losing' girls to film something and the 'middle' girls were left to stand around with the previous losers in the plaza - abandoned. They really looked like dazed sheep for about an hour.

Best part of your day there?

My favorite part was probably dealing with Britany. I could tell she was on to me right away. As a result, she kept trying to jump in and say or do the 'right' thing - even if I was talking to somebody else. So I took great pleasure in turning around everything she tried into some sort of insult or other cause to act hurt, offended, or scandalized. She got pretty furious with me, and was the only one to say something to me after the shoot. Essentially, she said that she knew I was a plant, but I didn't have to be such an asshole. But yeah, Britany, I did. Because that's exactly what they hired me for.


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So Good Job James, Cleveland is Proud! And moving on to this week....

This is Nigel with hair. I don't know why. I watched the damn thing and I still don't know why.

You can read the live blog here. This week a bunch of stuff happened, but what mostly happened is Alex proved she was almost ready to be a big girl serial killer, as she batted and toyed with the girls like a nasty little porch cat. Also she won a car. Britani lost her shit finally and snapped, and did that "I'm having a panic attack on tv" thing that always causes me pause, because for a small moment in space and time, I can absolutely understand the feelings of a person who drowns kittens in burlap sacks for fun. Tyra was all like "If it were up to me, you wouldn't be here, but THIS IS A DEMOCRACY. LOOK AT ME BEING A FAIR AND BENEVOLENT TYRA". And Britani got to stay. Till next week anyway. When Tyra has her sold into a Ukrainian sex ring. For their photo shoot, the girls had to pose as deranged Gossip Girl fans, which turned out pretty much the way you would think that would turn out. They dressed up Alex in the skin of dead animals, and she turned her lips just so, and did her best Knight Rider impression. That girl is going to up and kill her whole church one day, just you watch.

The other crazy thing that happened last night is Sarah FINALLY told me about what Lisa from Cycle 5 has been doing. Which is this.



Seriously Sarah, it's Cycle 16. Were you saving this for a wedding present, and just gave up?

Movie Reviews from the Sickbed

The concept of a sickbed is so gross. The bed where you lie and wallow in your own germs. And it's so medieval sounding too, so it's not just conjuring images of sick people, but unwashed terrible dying peasants moaning in the corner of some one room hut, while the rest of the family works farming mud.

I don't know why it is that colds always wait until you have to work to be worse, but I really thought I was going to be okay today, and then I woke up and boom, it was like I was delirious. I mean, that really lost feeling where you can't seem to wake up even a little, and I couldn't stop coughing and I went back to bed for like 5 hours. When I sort of woke up, I pretty much just lay around dying and watching movies, sort of in and sort of out. So many of you assholes had this flu, I should have known it was going to get me. But I really thought I might avoid it. It was probably all that time at the film festival last week. Large crowded places. But Kawasawki Rose was pretty great. I'm putting that down now in type so tomorrow when I'm not hopped up on over the counter cough suppressant, I'll remember to look up the other two films by that director.

So anyway, here's what I watched today and what I thought about it.

The Switch

I don't know why I gravitate towards the most awful romantic comedies when I'm sick. It's the same instinct that caused me to only read Sweet Valley when I was sick in high school. The plot of this movie is that Jenn Aniston is some career woman who decides she's going to get pregnant and have a baby, and Jason Bateman plays her neurotic best friend who doesn't have the balls to tell Jenn he loves her, so INSTEAD he drunkenly switches her SPERM DONATION with HIS OWN. SPERM. Hilarity ensues.

Lessons learned from this movie: 1)If you force a woman unknowingly and against her will to have your child, even though she's already made it clear she's not interested in procreating with you, its okay. Because she'll just cry a little, and then totally be in love in with you. 2) Even if you are not in your child's life for the first six years of it, they will still totally grow up having your hand gestures and facial expressions and hypochondria. It will be obvious to everyone that this is your little seed all grown up because they are an asshole just like you, genetically!

Bye Bye Birdie

Oh Ann Margaret. Oh Jesse Pearson. Whatever, I don't need to defend shit to you.



Strangers on a Train

My very favorite part of this movie is when Guy is getting into a cab, and he sees Bruno standing on the building steps far away watching him, and he just stands there as they drive away, this small undefined silhouette against the white marble. Also Ruth Roman who plays Anne Morton, is one of those women who are handsome, not pretty. You forget that used to be a much more common thing, style, trend, whatever. You know, like she's honorable, not cheap. Weird funny America.

Dinner for Schmucks

Remember this one? With Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd. Oh Paul Rudd. Geez. Why for art thou Paul Rudd? Out of what cursed late 50s doo wop crooners loins did you spring? My personal theory is that deep within a South American communist research facility they were trying to clone John Cusack circa 1997, and Paul Rudd is the closest they got. If Jennifer Aniston had been the love interest in this movie, it would have totally been ruined for me.

My favorite part was when the vulture grabbed the finger and ran all the way down the table with it. Vultures are hilarious when they run. Also all the dead mice were adorable.

Tigers on Surfboards was the other thing I did all day.

Me and Alcohol

So I'm working on this project with a couple friends of mine, and I'm supposed to come up with 5 meaningful stories that involve alcohol, but that aren't drinking stories. Rather just important things that have happened around alcohol. Not because of alcohol, just in the presence of.

I can tell drinking stories. I have drinking stories. Like when Peter made me take that shot of Yukon Jack and I spit it up all over the bar at Edison's. Or the 20+ jello shots I ate that during that one birthday party of mine. The time Joe at Trinkas made me take a shot of this bright orange stuff in a jar that he said was all the dregs of every bottle that ended up with less than a shot in it. The phase I went through of trying to create my own drinks at martini bars, one of which unfortunately involved a honey liqour. I have stories about drinking to impress people, or drinking to put up with a boyfriend, or one night stands. But that's not what they are looking for. They want stories about things changing in my life, and the alcohol that marked it, that happened to be around at the time.

Only it turns out I don't have any of those.

And I think it's because I don't have a lot of life changing events. Or I just don't look at things like they are life changing. There's what? City Year? Phoenix? Peter dying? I don't associate alcohol with any of that. My most alcoholic boyfriend I actually met and broke up with sober. Ayers and I did a lot of drinking together, but the fighting was always sober. The drinking was just there to keep us from being bored. I didn't really drink during high school or college, I did other things. And my family doesn't drink together except on holidays, and then we just sit around and talk a lot. There are three times I can remember being extremely wasted - once was with Krista at Funky Buddha, once was the first date I had with Corrigan when I fell down the stars, and the latest one was at the vodka party. Nothing really happened as a result of any of those times, except, you know, I was hungover.

I guess the point is, when I really examine my emotions towards things, I don't consider the large things important, only the details. The story about me drinking in a bar in the middle of an afternoon with Ayers? That's important, because that's how things were for years. And drinking sprite mixed with boxed wine in my Kent dorm room with Sarah and Amanda? That's important, because those were my closest friends there. Also cause I thought it was kind of gross. Peter always ordering a Celebrator at Edison's, and giving me the little white horses to collect is important. Drinking goldschlager in the basement of the Grid with Buddy and Tommy, because we were underage and it had gold in it, that's important. Chocolate martinis are important because they were my gateway drink to the world of adult bars. The specific brand of Romanian wine that Buddy and I spent years ordering from Northcoast, to the point where he only kept it stocked because of us, because it was the first red wine we actually liked. The cheap champagne I started drinking exclusively after Marty's wedding, because it occurred to me I liked champagne so much and I could just buy it, I didn't have to wait for things to happen.

There are drinks that are important to me, because they are the drinks that have been with me through my life and represent phases.

But the conflicts, the fights and moves and boys that made or broke me, none of them have anything to do with alcohol at all. I've been surprisingly sober during the immediate moments of my life.

Which leads to an interesting conclusion - do I drink more because it means nothing bad will happen, or do I drink less because otherwise nothing bad will happen?

Timecard

Its funny to me that whenever I'm trying to think of a song, in my head I visually look through the stacks at the Record Exchange, trying to remember where I used to file what. I mean, it's not the worst system, it's alphabetical.





Friday: at Bac with Tara, got the Pad Thai which is what I always get because that's what I do, I find one dish at every place and I just order that every time. I would like to know the number of times in the past ten years I've ordered chicken fried rice from Johnny Mango's, no cucumbers, extra lime sauce. It's probably like ten million and two. After dinner, we went to my mom's house to play with the chicks, and Tara put one to sleep in her hand by squishing it. Which makes it sound like she killed it, with her heavy crushing palm, but in fact if you are something light and fluffy, you like to be reminded of heavier creatures sitting on you and keeping you warm, so you go to sleep automatically. That is a true statement that can be applied to multiple life forms.

Saturday: went to Kelly and Krista's joint birthday party. I got there late, because I do that, I get to places late. The other day I was meeting Jere somewhere, and I texted him where I was, but he didn't even bother to check his text because he assumed I would be running late. Anyway, wore sequins, I like to do that the most these days. Spent a large amount of time talking about places and things I hadn't thought about for years, like the Ledges, and psychic vampires, and Brunswick. Turns out that many of the things that shouldn't exist actually take place in one of the places I know don't exist. I Was heartened to learn that I now had a large amount of friends, the majority, who had to have psychic vampires explained to them, that's nice. I've been in weird places in my life. Look, here is the easiest explanation. They are terrible boring people who kill every mood or room they walk into and somehow they have turned that into a delusional belief in their ability to feed off life energy, or some shit like that. Jesus, people are fucked up. They are capable of believing anything.But I guess that's what we get for allowing religion to be socially acceptable.




Sunday: Went to meet Sarah's new dog, Maurice. Afterwards I went to the Grovewood and drank some wine and read Edward Albee at the bar. That place is really more of a restaurant, so I felt a little out of place, but hey, I bought food. I haven't had dinner by myself like that in a while. You'd think at 31 I would be better at it. Then went to the cafe arts collinwood, which will forever be called the Waterloo in my head and really thats for no good reason, for a reading. I got a little lit there, and there was a very drunk guy who sat next to me who made a big deal out of having to go drink someone under the bar at another bar, then left to go do that. He was wearing track pants and had been drinking at the bar down the street from my house on the other side of town. I don't remember much about the readings except there was a story about giving birth to a dead baby that was very long. And I don't mean to belittle this woman's pain, but when you are a little fucked up, and it's nice outside, and it's been a good day? A 20 minute story about something like that is just...well its not okay.



Monday: Jere and I went to the film festival downtown. The first movie was at 9:20am, which is just a ridiculous time to start watching a movie, and even worse the one I chose was this movie about an old woman who has spent the last decades of her life only reading and translating Dostoevsky. And I had to know what that actually did to a person. It was a great movie. But we needed coffee badly when it was done. Went to a shorts program, and then to a bar to drink a little. The last movie we went to was Paradise Hotel, which was this documentary about these Gypsies living in this cold war style concrete slab apartments complex, which had over the last 20 years become completely gutted, so that it really literally was only these empty concrete box rooms one after another. All the plumbing and appliances had been stolen or sold years ago. They were living in caves basically. There was no electricity, so a few of the rooms were hooked up with generators. A mother bathed her kid by pouring plastic bottles of water over him. Everyone just threw their garbage out the window, and there was a moat of garbage around the building, which were then picked through by the men collecting bottles and horses grazing on it. Another older man paid these other guys to pick the okra that was growing by the fields outside on the empty hills surrounding this place. This young woman had slept with this guy, and therefore since she was a virgin, he had to come and take her away from her mother's house in a horse and cart, with her mother screaming after her not to go with the Gypsy! Well she told a story about how the first three days she was there in his apartment, she couldn't eat because it was so filthy. But they were all so happy and smiling as they are telling the camera about living there, because, you know, they're Gypsies! That's what they do. Smile about everything.



In completely unrelated news, I really really want to go to Gypsy, West Virginia. Like, right away.



Tuesday: I don't quite know. I'm pretty sure that's the day I met Laura up at Deagans. Which, frankly, is not a place I go to a lot. The staff is nice and the food is good, but there's something about the crowd in there that gives me the willies. And there's nothing obviously bad about them. It's not like ostensibly full of douchebags or anything. But still. It makes me nervous. Also I really hate parking in the large lots that Lakewood has all over. Also, for no apparent reason.

Wednesday: Went to see another movie at the festival, which was this Polish film about being occupied by the Nazis, only the family is three sisters who are hiding out in their very large well off Polish aristocracy country estate. It is about as awful as it sounds like it should be. I don't know why we didn't figure it out when we read the description, but I suspect we picked it while drinking Monday. Anyway, it was 2 hours long and Jere actually left before it was over, which is shame because the ending was SO BAD, I feel like he really missed out. Later, it snowed heavily, the last hurrah of winter, and we drank whiskey, and I hung out with a friend and stayed up listening to old country vinyl late.



Thursday: Oh! The Books! Were at the Beachland, and I sort of wavered about going since I hadn't had sleep in two days, but then did anyway, and it was fantastic. Pavel from tango was there too, so I tagged along with him, and when we walked in, all these little hipster kids were sitting on the floor of the Ballroom, listening to the opening act. But Pavel refused to sit on the floor for the Books, so during the break, he positioned himself right at the front of the stage, defiantly blocking the floor people. Then as new people came in, they all stood right by the stage too, so then eventually all the floor people were forced to get up, and it was sort of war for a minute. Are you a stage person or do you sit with the floor people? That show was so good.



Friday: Went for drinks with a friend, so he could tell me about his friends bachelor party in Belgium the week before. Ended up talking crudely about snaggletoothed prostitutes and various other sexual proclivities. I'm personally of the opinion that when given the option in Bruges, one should always get a dance from the snaggletoothed young woman in the red booth. Felt myself getting sick, that just a little high feeling and that little nagging cough?

Saturday: full on sick. Went looking in my cabinets for Tylenol PM, and found three bottles of the stuff, cause I just keep losing it and buying more. Ended up doing the whole "take 2 pills and drink a pot of coffee to counteract it" routine. Later went to have dinner with Jay and Dawn and Thomas. Its interesting to think about how your friends decorate their living spaces, especially those friends you've known a while and seen move. Tara, for instance, has a very distinctive put together dark wood bright walls look, which she assembles miraculously in a day. Buddy likes things spare and clean. Marty likes a little bit of clutter, the line of sight broken up. Jay and Dawn lived together so long, they both sort have the same style, though Jay is a little bit more clay and Dawn is a little bit more silk. Now that they are in different places, its funny to see how much their homes still resemble each other. We were supposed to be doing artsy stuff, but instead we just sat around and talked. I was getting progressively more and more sick, coughing constantly. I drove home through E. 55th and was totally impressed by how the city fixed up all the potholes. Got home and went straight to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got a fever, and kept getting up through out the night, in the middle of strange constant dreams, to drink water and brush my teeth obsessively. I hate the way my mouth tastes when I'm sick.

Sunday: Woke up with that cold sweat light headed clear feeling that washes over you when a fever breaks. As if you've been bathed in cold water. But I mean, for instance, I just enjoyed a Chris Isaak song, so I have to still be pretty sick.

Places In Ohio That Do Not Actually Exist No Matter Who You've Slept With That Claims to Have Grown Up There. They Are Lying. And Probably A Spy.

Broadview Heights
Seven Hills
Middleburg Heights
Willowick
Pepper Pike
Russell Township
Boston Mills
Independence
Linndale
Grafton
Sheffield Lake
Bay Village
Aurora
Wooster
Olmsted Falls
Parma Heights
Brunswick
Highland Heights
Elyria

Edit: Reminderville? It's like they are not even trying to sound real.
Edit 2: Oh Oh Oh HOCKING HILLS
Edit 3: Hunting Valley, Sagamore Hills, Geauga County, Oakwood, Wadsworth for the win..

Family Visit

So these are two cameras my dad had sitting around, back in the days when he was going to put a dark room in the basement bathroom. It's nice to have things in common with your family. I mean, all of us as a group, we're pretty similar anyway. But my two aunts from Washington stopped by yesterday on their way to Niagra Falls, my dad's sisters, and I haven't seen Aunt Mary since I was a very little girl, I know next to nothing about her. She brought out her new field camera to show me, and then Dad broke out these two, and they all started talking about their dad's photography and cameras, and it was just pretty nice. Then Dad agreed to let me take the one on the right home, and it needs to be cleaned up a lot, but how cool would it be to learn how to use that? So there's a new thing to do. It never occurred to me that my grandfather was into photography, and my aunt, in addition to my dad. That it could be like being into science fiction, or being big readers, or not liking ketchup.

We're not very close with our extended family, I haven't seen most of my aunts or uncles since childhood. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that (Carrie says my greatest skill is tolerance? That came up recently. We'll discuss that further another day, I have counter arguments.). We all have separate lives. They keep in touch a little. But the dynamic of watching my dad or my mom with their siblings is rare enough to be watched closely. Sometimes when he's talking to one of them, I see little peeks of Nick and Carrie and I. Funny how even when you don't grow up with it, the family patterns maintain. Also funny, how you forget that you are all grown from the same weird lifestyle tree, until you hear stories about your cousins doing odd things like becoming a doctor at 39 in the Caribbean when the kettle corn business didn't work out, or studying linguistics in Astoria and being really into RPGs, and it's like, well of course we're sort of the same, even from all the way across the country. Our parents grew up together after all. You know what's a real weird world? The destinies of middle class liberal family kids. There's some odd shit that happens there.



These are Mom's new chickens. We are going to call them The Survivors. We are not going to elaborate on that. Chickens are apparently all named out after travel trailers. Winnebagos. Wyandottes. Oh, and the white crested Polak. That one's my favorite.

ANTM Cycle 16: Alex is Going to Cut A Bitch One of These Days

Bridget: so I get that Alexandria is recording her commentary for these episodes after the fact, but did they have to record all of them in the big blue hair bow?

Sarah: I know, I hate it

Bridget: because it is making me think of Ms Piggy in Muppet Babies

This week's LiveBlog: The Commercial.

Sarah: what's with the tiny hat?

Bridget: I want that giant silver carp shirt

but yeah, that hat is way too small

Sarah: she's like a French clown

Bridget: like, she's a tiny midget thug

lol

a french midget thug clown

Sarah: "help me open my jar of rainbows!"

Bridget: "life is sad and therefore we drink!"

Sarah: "now ride away with me, on my invisible pennyfarthing!"

Bridget: "the moon is crying"

Bright Eyes

The day Elizabeth Taylor died, everyone woke up in a bad mood. The coffee got spilled, and people didn't wake up next to the people they wanted to, and it snowed in New York, and it was rainy and cold everywhere else. Why were we all such horrible grumpy stained people, crawling out of the muck and mud, our souls tamped down like church candles that burned too long and melted the wax into the thick red industrial carpet? We didn't know it at the time, but obviously the ghost of Virginia Woolf had infected us all in her fury, raging against the setting of her sun. Obviously. She was probably pissed off that its impossible to find a youtube clip of National Velvet that some fan girl hasn't set to awful modern country music.

I remember a conversation once where someone told me, or I told them, that Liz's purple eyes were a sign she was an ancient Egyptian alien? That seems about right.

Twitter leaves a weird imprint of you when you die.

@DameElizabeth Hold your horses world. I've been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself. 8:17 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

@DameElizabeth No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself. 8:19 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

@DameElizabeth Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all. 8:20 PM Jul 22nd, 2010 via web

Ice Cream: How Sweet Moses Gave Us Sugar Comas

It's kind of neat when you get to do things like go with your friends to preview ice cream parlors, though I have to wonder if there has ever actually been a bad review of an ice cream parlor? I know it's only March, but ice cream right? Ice Cream is my heroin. I had pretty much kicked the habit completely all winter. You don't understand how impressive that is. But like, I can't turn down a free sundae. I mean seriously.

So this is Sweet Moses, which is an ice cream parlor at Gordon Square. It's being opened by this very nice man who got out of corporate work and was like "dude, I wanna open an ice cream parlor" and then did just that. Which is impressive. Most of you will never do that. I will probably never do that. His family was all aproned up and working as well, and they were all really sweet, especially his son. The staff was fresh faced and rosy, and the whole place had that shiny clean new feeling of the just polished. There's a beautiful bar to sit at in front of a huge mirror with bright lights, the soda fountains in front of you and the whole array of syrups and mixers and chocolates. All three of us got turtle sundaes, cause who picks anything else? Soulless jerks that's who. Or, I guess, people allergic to nuts.

The thing about Camilla and Sarah and I is that we are sort like Sex in the City, if Sex and the City was actually about a bunch of weird girls with raccoons paws who cannot resist popcorn.

We had a lot of little free candy samples of the bark and ice cream and caramel corn and white cheddar corn and jesus, we all went into sugar shock like an hour after. Camilla later took way too much money out of the ATM and stole a shark pinata. I later had a conversation on the phone in which I'm pretty sure I sounded like a 10 yr old Brownie scout. I did in fact twirl my hair for the rest of the afternoon. The whole damn day became like a run through of Bye Bye Birdie, only instead of the phone call song, just flash text messages across the screen. Sugar high 30 yr olds, god. For instance, look at the condition of our table when we left. Remember, none of us have kids.

Popcorn on the floor even.

C: Oh my god I have diabetes now.
S: We all have diabetes now.
C: My feet are going numb.

So okay, how was everything right? Well Sweet Moses makes the best caramel corn ever. I'm not exaggerating. It's pretty amazing. Just go there first to get that. And in the bag of samples we got to take home The English Toffee was incredible. Really melty on your tongue, like the maple candies you get from Burton during the sap season, but you know, made of pure butter. The ice cream itself made me think it was soft serve, it was that kind of creamy, and the sundae all together was huge, definitely something to share. The homemade hot fudge was pretty good . The white cheddar corn was great. I know it sounds like I'm just extolling their virtues cause they gave me free sugar, but let's face it, if you're going to think about opening an ice cream place on the corner of Detroit and W.68th, you'd better know what you're doing. And I'm just saying, they seem like they know what they're doing. The only thing I wasn't really into were the peanut butter sandwiches, with fillings like nutella, marshmallow, and bacon. But I'm not really a peanut butter girl anyway, and I guess if I was a kid and someone bought me a peanut butter nutella sandwich for a snack, I'd be pretty happy. It'll be a great place to walk to after a movie in the summer. Babysitters and first daters who aren't going for the drunk first kiss, take note.


So yes, thumbs up on Sweet Moses. Although they need more stuff on their walls. Hopefully as they become part of the neighborhood that will start to fill up, cause it seems like they're running that place with love, and usually that leads to collections. Which will probably be a bunch of art I won't like, but that's how you can really tell when places are really staying, when they get a little clutter. I personally like the old Cleveland prints they have up now, they just need like, more of them.



Sweet Moses officially opens up this Saturday. Another sign that finally Spring is here and I am never ever ever going to wear a coat again.

What's Kinda F-ed is That I will be 49 when this happens again

The moon, wandering alone between the stars and the clouds, every 18 years can no longer resist the pull of the Earth, and has to come closer. Just for a visit right? Just a quick romp and back to business as usual. It doesn't, like, mean anything. It's not like the moon is looking for anything serious. The moon has other things to think about after all, like its wide circle of friends, and all those various moon projects it's got going on.

And after all, there is the serious danger that the earth will swallow the moon whole, just pull it crashing into pieces in the center of it, and then everything will explode and look, that could totally happen at any second. You don't know the plan of the universe. Sure it all seems like clockwork and surety, but if everything's a cycle, and it's all in little increments of years, but then those increments get longer and longer the bigger you go, then how do you know that some unknown crazy millennium long cycle isn't going to come due, like, tomorrow? How do you know for sure that it isn't the very end of the cycle right now? There's a beginning and an end, and we have no idea where either one is. Things are ending and beginning all around us all the time.

Everyone here on earth is walking around in their own private cycles, and they keep bumping into other people's cycles willy nilly (I see a mass of people all wearing hula hoops, wandering around aimlessly in bumper car dance patterns, that's us). That seems to keep working. Only very once in a while does something get severely derailed, and then the huge human system just starts to work the wound clean and closed again. Like ants. Or blood cells coagulating and skin cells regrowing. So the moon tells itself that hey maybe it doesn't matter what happens, you just gotta do what you feel like, what the universal forces are telling you to. The moon is a little bit of a fatalist, though if you corner it one night at a party, it will furiously deny it. The moon is made of contradictions.

Also it's patently incapable of not being in a story. Like, if something just makes sense at the time, then why try to resist the tentacles of light rising up from the great glowing cities on the dark continents? It's so pretty and sparkly and the moon had forgotten how fun it was to get as close as possible to the bulbs, until it can see spots and colors on the back of it's moon eyelids.

And then rush back again, a moon rabbit, to sense and sensibility. Having adventures.