July, 2010

  1. DINOSAUR DAY 2010!!!!!

    July 23, 2010 by ms. xandra

    If I go down in history for anything in the world, I want it to be for inventing Dinosaur Day, the day on which we honor our long lost reptilian overlords, the dinosaurs, by going on Dinosaur Pilgrimage.  Last year, we celebrated the inaugural dinosaur day with a trip to the Cabazon Dinosaurs, home of a terrifying creationist museum.  This year, aided and abetted by roadsideamerica.com, a website that has come to dictate far too many of my day to day activities, we went on yet another ambitious journey into the desert, in the middle of July, where it reached 44 fucking degrees celcius.  But nothing will stop Dinosaur Day!

    Armed with seven hours worth of educational paleontology podcasts, we ventured forth to Apple Valley, California (stopping along the way at the Donut Man, in Glendora, the Official Donut Purveyor of Dinosaur Day), home of the now tragic, crumbling Apple Valley Dinosaurs.

    What was once a magnificent . . . mini golf course, is now a tragic monument to the loss of our long-departed lizardly overlords.  I braved six inches of barbed wire to get close to one, and, apart from that time at the Cabazon Dinosaurs, and that time at the Natural History Museum, and that time at Science North when I was five, and that time at the Bruce County Museum, and all of those other times when I’ve stood next to fake and/or reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, it was the closest I’d ever been to a dinosaur.

    So, I cannot over-emphasize the strangeness of this place, you know?  Wire and cement skeletons of fake dinosaurs were everywhere, a few had vestiges of their original paint jobs, and it was so hot and desolate.  I’m fascinated by the strangely melancholic desert cities in the middle of California – who are the people who choose to live there and why?Once, the area was booming, but it certainly isn’t anymore.  And, most importantly, who builds their dinosaur golf course out there?  My theory is that since Apple Valley is Route 66-adjacent, it might have been a tourist draw once, but now, there is nothing surrounding it.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

    Anyhow, we stopped at the Route 66 Museum in Victorville because it was there and because it was free, and it was fascinating too.  They have a 9 foot tall hula girl statue from Hulaville, which looms large over the entire museum, and which Aaron completely failed to notice because he is an oblivious boy who was busy reading the descriptions of antique radios.  And also the Route 66 Museum is right next to a Wonder Bread/Hostess warehouse store (yes, really) so next time we go out into the middle of the desert for no good reason I am going to buy a gross of Twinkies.

    And then we were off to Peggy Sue’s Diner and Diner-saur park.  If you’re going to have a giant 50′s diner with an entrance shaped like a jukebox, you need something to distinguish yourself from all of the other 50′s diners.  And apparently that thing is dinosaurs.  And to think I was already excited that there were sandwiches named after Fabian and Frankie Avalon and Richard Nixon!  I could eat a Frankie Avalon sandwich AND ALSO there were dinosaurs.

    And King Kong, don’t forget King Kong.

    And in case anyone needed any help with dinosaur identification, voila!  A handy guide to dinosaur taxonomy:

    And then we went home and watched The Land that Time Forgot, which had WONDERFUL and TERRIBLE fake dinosaurs in it and also cave men and Really Excellent Science.  Although it did suffer from a little too much “we are on a German U-boat and not very pleased about it”-style exposition before we got to the actual dinosaurs, but they were such good actual dinosaurs that I can’t complain much.  We also made our own Special Edition Dinosaur Day Ice Cream by throwing vanilla ice cream in the stand mixer with blue food coloring, malt balls, chocolate chips, and marshmallows, which, somehow, stands for dinosaur?  Whatever, it was awesome.

    I am thinking that for next Dinosaur Day we need to do something really big, and maybe actually involving real dinosaurs, like volunteering on a paleontology dig or something?  Whatever we do it will be amazing because Dinosaur Day is officially the BEST DAY OF THE YEAR.

    There are more Dinosaur Day pictures on that facebook thing, if you want ‘em.

    Category Adventure, Dinosaur! | Tags: | 3 Comments

  2. Operation Desert Storm

    July 15, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Many Moons Ago, my Gentleman Caller took me away for a suprise weekend of tramping about the desert.

    We went to Joshua Tree, which was much like Northern Ontario (rocks and trees and trees and rocks, and rocks and trees and trees and rocks, and waterrrrr), only completely different (rocks and cacti and cacti and rocks, and rocks and cacti and cacti and rocks and sannnnnnnnd).

    Aaron wore his jaunty, cactus-inspectin’ hat.

    And no, this is not a picture of me emerging from a giant cement vulva!

    It is a picture of me emerging from a giant cement (historically inaccurate and somewhat offensive but we’ll let it slide just this once cause it was the 1950s) teepee!  My Gentleman Caller is very good at helping me fulfill my insatiable need to experience as much novelty architechture as possible.  We stayed at the Wigwam Motel in lovely, scenic Rialto!

    Rialto has some very good mid-centuriness happening in it, like DJ’s Coffee Shop, which had tasty tasty breakfast.

    And the next day we went on a hilarious ghost town tour, stopping in Calico, a mining town turned ghost town turned historical re-enactment site/theme park at some point in the 60s that has changed very little since and thus remains hilarious and weird,

    And we went to California City, a weird planned city/social experiment that never really worked out – you should read about it.  All that’s there are the roads that were laid out for a city that was planned, but never populated because, shockingly, nobody wanted to move out to the middle of the desert.

    And then there was this, the most glorious sign I’ve ever seen, on a sadly closed-down drive in, somewhere outside Barstow:

    Category Adventure | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Everything’s in boxes

    July 15, 2010 by ms. xandra

    A lot is going on!  Big changes are afoot and many adventures are in the air.

    First of all, something that would have seemed so highly improbably mere months ago has happened:  I have moved in with a gentleman.  I know, right?  But it is wonderful and good.  I am currently living off of his good graces in his apartment on the West side (part of operation Pay As Little Rent As Possible This Summer) and in the fall we will be moving back Eastwards to a West Hollywood apartment built for two.  Well, built for four, actually:  it will house myself, my Gentleman Caller, his Gentleman Hound Dog (Boomer Thaddeus Dog, Esq., World’s First Canine Lawyer), and a CAT that I am going to get and the cat will be grey and cute and named either Otto or Rock Hudson.  And as for my Gentleman Caller, well, suffice it to say that he makes me a pretty happy lady, and takes me on wonderful adventures and makes me tasty sandwiches.  Also, he is currently sitting behind me geeking out over an old synthesizer someone gave him to play with and it is totally cute.

    PLEASE NOTE that this does not change the fact that I am, and will always be a spinster, and spinsterly in my ways and doings.  I recently conferred with one of my sisters in spinsterliness and explained that, despite how happy Gentleman Caller makes me, I had been having a very fraught, angst-ridden identity crisis over the nature of my spinsterliness.  But Good Spinster Amy reminded me that, indeed, men may come and (hopefully not) go, but Spinterhood is Forever.  And since being angst-ridden is really our defining characteristic, what was I worried about anyhow?  And so now I begin this new weird life as a cohabitating spinster, with slightly less angst about that particular issue, but plenty of angst about most other things.

    Also, one of the sad things about this move is that my dear, dear now-former roommate, Sam, has left for New York for a year, and I miss him.  The glory days of 1027 North Laurel Ave have now come to an end.  But also this gives me an excuse to go to New York sometime.

    Other important things have happened recently, namely:  I have done the greatest thing that I will ever do.  No, no, I did not start and write my dissertation in a month.  No, I did not end world hunger.  Instead, I had a poem about crullers written in the style of William Blake published in the Los Angeles Times.  Because remember how I ran that Donut Summit for LA Metblogs (now totally sleekly redesigned and relaunched as blogging.LA)?  Well, the whole event was nothing short of miraculous and wonderful.   And the next day, when I saw that my cruller poem, written late one night when I needed to think of something funny to post on the blog, was in the LA Times, I laughed and laughed and laughed.  ”All of our hopes and dreams for you have come true,” said my father.  Well, all of my hopes and dreams for myself have come true, too.  I can probably just go ahead and retire now that I am a published poet.

    Giant fantastic things are coming up in the next few weeks, too:  I’m off to the UK for my first venture into actually doing research for my dissertation.  I’ll be traveling in the North for a couple of weeks, then meeting up with Gentleman Caller for a couple of weeks of vacationing in Belgium and the Netherlands.  And then I’m going back to London for a month of research at the British Library.  And TANYA IS COMING TO VISIT ME THERE AND WE ARE GOING TO KIDNAP HUGH GRANT!  Actually, probably we won’t kidnap Hugh Grant, probably we’ll just go laugh inappropriately at the art in the Tate Modern, and maybe see a soccer game.

    UNTIL THEN, my life is consumed by teaching the history of rock and roll to a group of people who ask me questions like “what is that electronic sound effect they use on Neil Young’s voice in that song.”  The technical term for that sound effect would, of course be “Just Neil Young’s Voice.”  Oh, the undergraduates!  Sometimes endearing, always entertaining.

    Also, Gentleman Caller and I went on a desert adventure that I am going to post about in a minute.  And also this weekend is dinosaur day so I will post about that in another minute!

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 2 Comments

  4. A desperate epistle from the land of Higher Education

    July 7, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Ways in which my students have spelled “The Shangri-Las”:

    The Shringa-Las,

    The Shrangris Las,

    The Shingles,

    The Shir La Las,

    The Rondelles,

    The Rockets.

    Artists my students have identified as the performer of “I Can See For Miles,” by The Who:

    The Byrds,

    The Beatles,

    The Rolling Stones,

    The Beach Boys,

    (and all of the above seem like completely understandable mistakes but the next two are totally inexplicable,)

    The Drifters,

    The Everly Brothers.

    IN OTHER NEWS:  So much other news!  But the most important other news at the moment is:  JULY 16th IS DINOSAUR DAY!!!!  Oh yes.  I bet you thought I didn’t mean it when I went ahead and invented a holiday last year.  Oh, but did I ever mean it.  And if you think I am ever going to let July 16th pass again without commemorating the loss of the late, great, dinosaurs, boy howdy, are you mistaken.  SO STAY TUNED!  This year I am going to invent some kind of dinosaur cake, perhaps a cherpumple variant?  But for now it will remain a thrilling mystery!

    Category Academe, Awesome | Tags: | 1 Comment