I’m back after an incredibly long hiatus, thanks to our 6-week internet blow-out. The day after Halloween, with black icing stains on my mouth and fake blood dried on my elbows, I whipped open my laptop, psyched to upload all of the pictorial evidence of the previous night’s witchery. Well, so much for my evil intentions. The internet was a corpse by morning and after hours logged on the phone with Verizon, I’m only getting to the goodies of 2009 Halloween right now!

In previous years, when I was living with 4 other roommates in a HUMONGOUS rowhome (the living/dining room itself held 6 couches, 2 coffee tables, a treadmill, pool table, entertainment center, 10 foot bookshelf, and more), we had huge Halloween parties because we (obviously) had the room. But now that I’m across the street in a 3 bedroom apartment, our abode is much more humble. I’ll never give up my Halloween party tradition because Halloween is the happiest of the year for me–it’s my Christmas, after all, but I do much prefer a smaller, pre-party atmosphere where people can appreciate the handmade decorations that kept me up ’til 3am all month, rather than rushing to yank people off my porch deck before it collapses under the weight of them and five kegs (true story). Ok, without further loquacious ado…

This was my favorite decoration of the year. Overall I was going for a heavy autumn ambience with lots of traditional images (less gory and more classic–jack ‘o’ lanterns, trick-or-treaters, etc). Traced the tree and tombstones on an old black sheet and collected those gorgeous leaves from right in my front yard

Another VV treasure. This candleabra was an ugly brown, so I spray-painted it black, added blood red candles, and (after the picture), draped it in cobwebs. And then I listened to The Cure’s Disintegration.

Two nights before Halloween and we’re already dressing up (kind of). My best friend on the left was Brett Michaels. Neither Meghan (middle) nor I had a costume, but she came over wearing a David Bowie shirt, so we gave her a 30 second Ziggy Stardust face, and me…a black eye, bloody nose and some mechanical doll stockings and I was instantly costumed!

Don’t frost your cupcakes with black icing.

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS
LISNER AUDITORIUM – WASHINGTON, D.C.
OCTOBER 26, 2008

Thanks to Youtube, anyone can be famous these days. Post a video of yourself sobbing maniacally over the media’s treatment of Britney Spears, and you’re a small-town drama kid turned glorified internet star overnight! Yes, that would be Chris Crocker, and yes, my roommate and I watched all 50 of his videos one bored night last summer. 

But if anyone on Youtube deserves the trophy for best videos, originality and true hilarity, it’s this guy: 

(also check out Mother’s Day, My Son is Gay, and The Christmas Tree)!

Spring-mmer, Autumnal Heaven, and Winter(less)

DC’s Spring-mmer is in the air. Spring vitality + summer swelter descend simultaneously here in the nation’s capital, known to skip the balmy breezes of spring and catapult into the muggy, built-on-top-of-a swamp heat, thick and pasty like oatmeal. That’s right, you can bend down and gather up that gloppy, dense heat in your hands, form it between your sweaty palms, and fling it at the segway-rider who stands next to you at the red light, holding an icy pack to his melting forehead.

Having grown up in Dallas, I know the miracle of coming inside to an refrigerator-cool house after being outside in temperatures that are warned by news anchors and local officials as being dangerous to one’s health. I love the aura of summer, but I hate it’s migraine-inducing heat.  And living in a city that truly WAS built on a swamp, who boasts no skyscrapers with temporarily cooling relief from their spacious shadows, I suffer. Central air is scarce, public pools are urine-ridden, and hotel amenity pools have caught on to the “Can I just take a dip while I wait for my parents to park the car?” scam. I guess I’m finally starting to show my age.

I don’t care if I have to apply suntan lotion every hour, and never leave the house without my watergun-fan and parasol. I will NOT let the sun’s lava hot breath keep me from enjoying the magic of summer this year. Quarries, lakes, beaches, rivers, canals, and the Georgetown public pool (the only one in DC without tadpoles) get ready: here I come, flippered and unevenly- coated in Banana Boat, ready to canon ball in your tepid, murky waters!

After a full week of visiting every animal shelter in DC, I have finally found my feline soul mate. She was actually the first kitten I met, and greeted me with a sweet purr. When I reached in toward the back of her cage where her 2 siblings crouched, she heaved her 1.5 lb fuzzy body on my wrist and batted the top of my hand repeatedly, like a mother slapping her young boy’s hand as he reaches for his seventh cookie. She was protecting her little brother and sister, and as she slapped my hand incessantly, (I swear she broke out in a sweat), I got weaker and weaker and fell on the floor laughing. I should have just scooped her up into my purse and scrammed.

Fate was screaming in my ear, “She’s the one!” while I visited the rest of DC’s homeless felines. Either they got adopted out before my application was accepted, or something just didn’t feel right. Either way, I was feeling guilty about getting a kitten, thinking I should give a home to an adult cat who was in greater need of love, but the only call back I got was from my attacker kitten. I went back to The Washington Humane Society where she is temporarily living and decided that there was/is no other kitten in this world more perfect for me than her.

So the shelter manager told me I’d have to wait a week and a half to take her home, after she was spayed. I wasn’t happy about it, but I really had no choice. I decided to name her Lola, and went to visit her yet again this weekend. We were playing in the visiting room; she was springboarding herself against walls and spiderwalking horizontally against the futon in the room, when I noticed the letters “B” and “O” in big capital letters on her collar. I picked up the peanut-sized kitten in my hands and finished the word.

B-O-Y.

Lola?! I immediately flipped her over on her back for a little inspection. Looks like my little darling is actually a handsome little feller after all. The adoptions manager confirmed this (a bit sheepishly), and I was left reeling in the hilarity that I almost named my first born kitten-child Lola, a name AND FATE which she shares with that same Lola that the Kinks wrote a song about. Yes, she was a transvestite. In case you have forgotten the words, or never heard them-shame on you! (paraphrased lyrics):

I met her in a club down in old soho

Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola

C-o-l-a cola

She walked up to me and she asked me to dance

I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said lola

L-o-l-a lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well Im not the worlds most physical guy

But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine

Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well Im not dumb but I cant understand

Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man

Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well we drank champagne and danced all night

Under electric candlelight

She picked me up and sat me on her knee

And said dear boy wont you come home with me

Well Im not the worlds most passionate guy

But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my lola

Lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

I pushed her away

I walked to the door

I fell to the floor

I got down on my knees

Then I looked at her and she at me

Well thats the way that I want it to stay

And I always want it to be that way for my lola

Lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls

Its a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for lola

Lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well I left home just a week before

And Id never ever kissed a woman before

But lola smiled and took me by the hand

And said dear boy Im gonna make you a man

Well Im not the worlds most masculine man

But I know what I am and Im glad Im a man

And so is lola

Lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

I read an article yesterday that said blogs are the new resumes. If that’s the case, I’m still in Mr. Watto’s 10th grade Western Civ class, and working as a produce cashier at Shady Brook Farm on the weekends. 

Don’t ask me why I am only now, in the year 2008, finally getting around to buying my own personal computer (“own” and “personal” are redundant, I know, but this sad anecdote needs emphasis).  Also, don’t ask me how I’ve survived without a computer for the past 8 to 10 years, (and yes, a few of you have actually uttered that very word, “survived”), because I can’t tell you that either. Also, because you don’t need a computer to survive, silly. Just matches and oxygen and water and Odwalla bars. 

Believe it or not, I DID have a personal laptop at one point in my life. Just after high school graduation, Dad gave me an extra one of his 15 lb. CTX brand laptops (come again?) from his work that no one used anymore–go figure.  So I lugged the lap-sized (lap of a sideshow circus lady, that is) laptop down to Fairfax with me, and had the campus IT guy hook it up (the look on my face when he asked me for my IP address must have been priceless. I think I may have said, “No, PA–you know, Pennsylvania”). Either way, it lasted all of a week. Couldn’t get any internet connection, and even the university IT dept couldn’t help restore any life. So my roommate shared hers, in exchange for me downloading some of the best songs from Napster to ever grace her desktop (this included the Cure’s “Pictures of You”, Sunny Day Real Estate’s “Bucket of Chicken” and The Queens of the Stoneage’s “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret”). 

I bet her crappy old Dell misses me now. 

So on to the point-why am I finally joining the ranks of laptop-toting humanity? Well, as I’ve been an oblivious victim (or survivor) of trends bypassing me all my life, this is one I think will work in my favor, no matter what season my skin tone, or shape of my butt. I’d like to temporarily set the mighty pen aside and see if I can train my brain to start thinking in new ways. (If you too have long or always been a notepad-carrying devotee, then you exactly how hard this really is. Rewiring is necessary). I can only hope this new feeling will sweep me off my feet, of an ADD mind suddenly released from the timely shackles of pen and notepaper. No more eraser fury actually tearing holes through the paper (although in reality, I write strictly with blue Papermate pens–don’t know how or why). I hope this will work; I’m sure it will increase my workflow and actual output, so procrastination is no longer on the menu. Only time will tell, so stay tuned….

Finally moved in. Finally Friday.