April, 2008

  1. Tanya’s Puppy is famous!

    April 27, 2008 by admin

    Thank you, Chris Leavins!

    And, I am pleased to report, that as of right now the comments thread on the Lola post has degenerated into geeks making poo jokes at each others’ expense. Oh, interwebs.

    Oh, hey, I saw Julie Andrews today. And look at this vintage movie poster that I got (in a situation that was unrelated to seeing Julie Andrews)! I have never seen this film but I am completely sold on the concept of Sin-Ascope.


  2. I hate to say it but,

    April 26, 2008 by admin

    with this news, it has become clear that cupcakes have jumped the shark.

    (I will keep baking them, though. I was doing it before it was trendy.)

    Oh, and, mandatory X-Files reference.


  3. What I learned today at the L.A. Times Festival of Books

    April 26, 2008 by admin

    “Well, Leonard Maltin dropped those ones off in a box.”
    – The Person in Charge of the Cinematheque Booth Where I Was Volunteering, in response to me asking “where did we get all of these used books that we’re selling?”

    “All of your children will live on Alpha Centauri. And beyond!”
    – Ray Bradbury, on the not-too-distant future.

    Um, and clearly the Mr. Toast booth was the best booth. I bought a watercolour of a depressed, anthropomorphic onion with the caption “Still Alone.”


  4. Um, really?

    April 25, 2008 by admin

    This is the X-files movie poster? Um, that’s fine. I guess. But boring. Gosh. More important, however, is the following question: Fox Mulder, why do you look like Zach Braff in these pictures? I am concerned. At least Scully is rocking sexy long hair and wide-legged-like-Katherine-Hepburn-trousers. Scully never lets me down. Except maybe that one time when she got hit in the head with an entire bookshelf.

    I also just want to quote the Wikipedia article on the movie at this time, because it is always important to see what Wikipedia has to say, because, verily, Wikipedia, thou art our contemporary Delphic Oracle. And this is what Wikipedia lists in the cast list:

    This is, of course, hilarious because it raises the following questions:

    1. Dakota Whitney? Seriously, Dakota Whitney? Chris Carter, what is this? The Most Important Film of Our Generation, or a beauty pageant for twelve year olds? Because the only people I can think of who are named Dakota Whitney are twelve-year-old pageant princesses.

    2. Xzibit? What purpose could you possibly be serving in my X-Files movie? Please tell me it is to pimp out Mulder and Scully’s rental car.

    3. Um, haven’t we figured out by now that everyone who is not Mulder, Scully, Assistant Director Walter Skinner (World’s Sexiest Bald Man), or a Lone Gunman (who I anticipate will be miraculously resurrected for this film, because something else we’ve all realized is that nobody in X-Files ever actually dies) is of dubious character?

    But holy crap July 25th is going to be the most important night of my entire life! X-Files X-Files X-Files!


  5. Jacques Cousteau!

    April 24, 2008 by admin

    1. Dear friends who record songs and things and put them on the internet: what equipment and/or software do you use? I need to put my songs on, like, myspace, or something, like all the cool kids do, and instantly get a huge record deal if I ever hope to get Boyfriend on Trial, my concept album, out in this lifetime. Seriously though – any recommendations?

    2. Go listen to Cadallaca! I cannot properly express how happy they make me. And, damn, they make me want to get a farfisa and start me up one of those new-fangled “rock and roll” bands.

    3. A Spinster is coming to visit me in a matter of weeks! I baked a bundt tonight (traditional repast of the Spinster) in excitement. I look forward to hours of spinsterly fun, hopefully involving various spinsterly customs, including but not limited to: drinking margaritas out of pineapples, consumption of bundt, attending cultural events whilst intoxicated, channeling Fraulein Maria, getting belligerently drunk and cat-calling Messianic percussionists, lolling.

    4. I really want . . . to watch Deadwood. By which I mean, I really want to bed sheriff Seth Bullock. Also, I have been thinking about getting cowboy boots, a completely irrational impusle, because what clothing to I own that would look good with cowboy boots? No clothing. Oh, gee, it must be spring because my annual cowboy fixation has returned.

    5. At last count, I currently have wicked mad crushes on no fewer than four (4) Highly Unsuitable Men. (Reminder: The only men who do not fall into this category are Sensitive Sweater Men, who, as we all know, are rarer than the unicorn, and twice as elusive.)

    6. And, in celebration of the fact that I miraculously got an A in France is Aggravating Class, even though I’m still not quite sure what the big deal was with that Dreyfuss Affair thingy, I leave you with the dulcet tones of my husbands, Brett and Jemaine:


  6. Superficiality

    April 22, 2008 by admin

    So, recently, an anonymous comment was left on my blog (an anonymous comment that I have subsequently deleted), basically implying that I am a superficial person and that my superficiality is what gets me through. I don’t know who posted it, but I do have my suspicions. If it’s not who I think it was, and was someone who was just making a joke that I grossly misinterpreted, then I’m sorry I’m mad at you, drop me an email and I’ll apologize. If it was who I think it was, you are a jerk and I have nothing to say to you, and you know who you are. But I’ve been bothered by that comment for days. I know that this blog mainly details fairly superficial things. I am not ignorant of this fact. But the reality is that I do not want to use it to explore the depths of my soul. And I do not want to use it to advance grand social or political causes. I have wrestled a lot with whether the way I use my blog should do more to acknowledge the privilege I have that allows me to use this public, online space to express myself. I wonder if I should be using this privilige to write more explicitly about more substantive things, about feminism, about anti-racism, about activism, about cultural critique, and about issues that are near and dear to my heart, but I have chosen not to do so in this space, at this time. There are a wide variety of reasons for this, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that I currently do not have the time and resources to do justice to such a project. I am also dealing with some long-standing, painful, personal issues regarding my own ability to feel confident and comfortable expressing a voice and voicing opinions, which cause me a great deal of angst and that I don’t want to go in to, and I really don’t feel like I am in a place where I am able to put myself out there in that way. Instead I live my beliefs, and I allow them to infuse my academic work, which is something that I take very, very seriously, and pour my heart and soul into. I am the kind of person who internalizes everything and takes everything to heart, and what I see going on in the world around me hurts me very deeply, and I just cannot talk about it here. In my academic work and in my everyday life, I like to think that I am far from superficial. And this is my space, and for me, writing here about what goes on in my life, in what I hope is a funny way, is a holiday, and helps me laugh at things, instead of being fucking depressed all the fucking time.

    So if you think that posting a link to a cool blog about vintage home furnishings makes me superficial, you can go fuck yourself. Because I am going to carry on blogging about superficial things – about vintage dresses, and about really good coffee, and about adventures in Los Angeles, and about cute boys, and about movies music books art and anything I damn well think is awesome and hilarious.


  7. New favourite blog!

    April 16, 2008 by admin

    Amazingness!


  8. Overheard at the Shitty Cafe

    April 15, 2008 by admin

    Some context: this is the Cafe where I go to do work and drink shitty coffee. I do not go to this place because it is good – I go because it is close to my house and is not a shitty Starbucks. It got a C rating from the board of health a few months ago, but I do not worry, because they have since managed to upgrade to a (prominently displayed) A, and I don’t eat the shitty food, I just drink the shitty coffee. Normally, Shitty Cafe is full of students. I have observed, however, that around 10:00 PM a new demographic begins to move in, namely, a demographic that consists of People Who Appear To Be Normal but Then Start to Speak and Reveal Themselves to be Mad. Last night, a man came in and was talking to his friend VERY LOUDLY in a very strange accent of indeterminably origin (possibly Scandinavian). At first he was talking about normal things, but then all of a sudden, VERY LOUDLY:

    “I don’t drink alcohol because it makes me impotent. I drink coffee because it makes me orgasmic. Once, in a cafe in Majorca, there was a blond German girl who wanted to seduce me. But she got me a bit drunk, so . . . it didn’t work.”

    Other items of note, unrelated to Shitty Cafes:

    1. I think I am getting a cold, which better not be true, because there are plans for a late night of bad sci-fi tomorrow, and a musicology field trip to the Westin Bonaventure (also known as Postmodernism: THE BUILDING!) on Thursday, so I would kind of like to be not ill.

    2. For How to Be a Teaching Assistant class, we are supposed to be recording the amount of time we spend doing any and all writing over the course of a week. I am looking forward to the moment on Friday morning when I get to reveal to my colleagues that the number of hours I spend writing mostly consist of blogging, drafting blog posts that never get posted, and making to-do lists.

    3. I am less angry today, I think because I finally went back to yoga. Also, I have finally found a yoga teacher that I like here. The last teacher I was with was too new-agey and encouraged a lot of flailing around (like, wtf?) and I would just leave class feeling really annoyed, which is not the point. This new teacher uses a teaching style that is best summed up as being smart-ass, which one would not think would work in a yoga environment, but, as an irony-loving asshole myself, I relate much better to smart-ass than I do to let’s-think-about-our-chakras-it’s-a-beautiful-day. Um, also, I worry that this new teacher will yell at me for not moving out of downward dog correctly, so I work harder, out of terror. (Also, possibly not the point, but probably good for building core strength.)


  9. Dear Cute Boys,

    April 14, 2008 by admin

    Ok, here is the new rule: The new rule is that you are not allowed to make comments that are borderline flirtatious unless you are actually intending to be flirtatious. Comments that fall into this category, just to make things completely clear, include any and all usages of the phrase “piece of your booty.” Because that phrase could just be funny . . . or it could be flirting. And do you know what happens when I, single girl who may have a crush on you anyhow, am faced with figuring out how to categorize the comment in question? I will tell you. I become unable to concentrate in class, and then sit around obsessing for most of my evening, hoping that you were actually flirting, and worrying that I wasn’t flirty enough back and that you will now stop flirting because I was unsure if you were flirting and thus didn’t react flirtily enough. Seriously, just ask me out.

    Yours flirtatiously,

    Xandra A.

    Dear glass of cream soda that I am drinking,

    You taste like egg nog. I don’t know how I feel about this.

    Sincerely,

    Xandra A.


  10. The internet is really funny this morning.

    April 14, 2008 by admin

    Australia thinks Los Angeles is a pimply teenager!

    Robot fabric! Robot fabric! Robot fabric!

    Where are you? What can I do?

    Pens on a plane!

    “In yet another crushing blow to the American democratic experiment, Prom Night was the big winner at the weekend box office.” (Possibly the best opening line to an article about box office figures, ever.)

    You’ll notice that I typed “Islamofascism” in Comic Sans, the world’s crappiest font. I did this to humiliate the Islamofascists.” (kudos to Tanya.)

    Ok. I guess I’ll go to school now.