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Further adventures of a lady about town

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Small adventures: I don’t know what you’re doing for your North American National Holiday (July 1 or 4, depending), but I have vacation plans that will top them all:  somehow, miraculously, I have convinced my dear Gentleman Caller that it is of Utmost Importance that we be in Roswell, New Mexico for the annual UFO Festival.  We have reached a point where every second conversation we have is something like “Are you sure you aren’t just humoring me?  I mean, we really don’t need to drive into the desert to hang out with a bunch of UFO crazies/purchase, cook, and serve an ostrich egg/sample every variety of donut in Seattle/start a 1930s dustbowl revival musical act/etc. if you don’t really want to.  I can always do these exceptionally ridiculous things on my own,” and his answer, because he is exceptionally super-duper, is invariably something along the lines of “No, I think that’s a great idea,” and that is why I keep him.

Larger adventures: First of all, let’s let the cat out of the bag:  I won’t be coming home to Canada this summer, which I feel kind of sad and guilty about, even though my mother keeps saying “why would you bother coming home?  It doesn’t make sense for you to go out of your way to come home,” as though coming home is some kind of exceptionally taxing chore (it isn’t.)  But I have a very good reason for not coming home!  I am going to England for much longer than anticipated because I got a travel fellowship!  So what this means is that I will be travelling in and around Liverpool for the first few weeks of August, and then meeting up with Gentleman Caller for a quick trip to a yet-to-be-determined locale (he will be on the continent because he is touring with the Bulgarian folk band that he plays in) and then I’ll be in London for the month of September!  I am obviously fairly excited about all of this, and flights are booked, and an apartment in London has been secured, and I just need to piece together the rest of the trip, and move my stuff out of my apartment and into storage (sure to be a headache, but what can you do?) and get my British Library reader pass, and then I’ll be all set!  I’ve never been to the UK before, so if anyone has any travel tips, I would appreciate them!

Consumerist adventures:  I think I want these.  I have been reading the Pamela Des Barres book which makes me covet some late-60′s-style summer shoes.  Internet, what thinks you?

Also, I have pictures of Ostrich Egg Giant Breakfast!  Soon!  I promise!

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Really good business ideas that will make me Lady Millionaire, Ph.D.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Because we all know that my only career prospects outside of academia are in entrepreneurship, I have thought of these foolproof business ideas that will make me millions of dollars.  Because it is 1 in the morning I just tried to spell “foolproof” with a ph at the beginning and had to stare at it for a while until I could figure out what was wrong.

1.  Voicemail from a Monkey.  We’ve talked about this before.  The way this works is you give me a million dollars and then I have a monkey leave voicemail at the phone number of your choice.  Makes a great birthday gift!

2.  Your Name on/in Beets:  I write your name in Sharpie on a beet.  The beet is placed in a jar, which is hung from a cord, which you wear as a necklace.  ALTERNATELY, I spell your name in sliced beets.  On a  plate.  Comes with a side salad for $1 extra.

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VOCABULARY WORD OF THE DAY:

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Megavertebrate.

I learned this word at the Wild Animal Park, which is where our adventuring took us this fine Sunday mid-morning.  Megavetebrates include rhinos, elephants, and similar.  I learned this word from our safari tour guide, who was loose and fast with the slightly inexplicable metaphors (ie:  ”the Cheetah’s fur is butterscotch and cream”) but who has provided me with a vocabulary word that will surely make an excellent name for either my heavy metal band or my pan flute quintet.

ALSO, how cute is a baby elephant???  You have no idea how cute a baby elephant is.  It is so cute.  And there where, what, five of them?  And they were so wobbly and smiley!  Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the cuteness because at this point in the afternoon I was too lazy to get my camera out of my bag and was content to let my Gentleman Caller do the phototaking, but here is a picture of a sassy lion chilling in the back of a truck which is also pretty awesome.

BUT MOST AWESOME OF ALL:  on the outskirts of Escondido, California, we came upon a produce stand.  And at said produce stand, what did we find?  OSTRICH EGGS.  For the reasonable price of $25, which, compared to the $40 they were charging at Ostrich Land, is a bargain!

Here it is, our very own Ostrich Egg!  Shown aside some less giant but no less noble chicken eggs for comparison:

OSTRICH EGG NUTRITIONAL FACTS:  Contains 500% Daily Intake of AWESOME.

I am very excited for next weekend’s Giant Brunch, featuring Giant Egg, Giant Toast, Giant Pancake, Giant Sausage, and, most importantly GIANT MIMOSA!   Who’s in?

INSPIRATIONAL RECIPES FROM BRAVE CHEFS WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE:

Deviled Ostrich Egg

Scotch Ostrich Egg

Ostrich Egg Omelette

Ostrich Egg Frittata

Ostrich Egg with Tarragon and Pine Nut Tarator

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Treasure hunts

Monday, April 26, 2010

We went to the flea market today.  Whenever I go, I usually don’t take more than $20 because it is guaranteed that I will spend any dollars I bring on something stupid like the time I almost bought an entire set of vintage Samsonite luggage because it was purple.  That would have been a bad idea, but luckily, I was out of cash.

What I really like to do, though, is to find a single, weird treasure that, ideally, costs about $2.  I usually have really good luck with this.  I have a tiny promotional calendar from 1957 that was printed for a beauty salon and every month has a different hairstyle pictured and some hilarious, 1957-style woman-to-woman advice that I got there once for, like, a dollar.  This is a prime example of the kind of treasure I go searching for.

Today, I got this old picture:

I want to be this lady when I grow up.  Who is she?  Why is so so dramatically lit?  Look at all the lines in her face – they’re amazing and beautiful.  Look at how melancholy her expression is.  Look at how expressive her eyes are.  I think, although I have no way of knowing, that this is a headshot and that she was an actor.  There’s an address on the back, and a phone number, and a name that I can’t quite make out – Marie something?  Elena?  Ellen?  Plum?  O’Something?  Who even knows – which is of course driving me, crazy because if I had that last name I would IMDB her.  But I love that the address is on Vine, which is such a famed, Old Hollywood thoroughfare, even though it’s kind of shitty and unremarkable now.  And I love that it’s so old that it was before 7 digit phone numbers – the HO at the beginning of the line of numbers at the bottom stands for Hollywood, the name of the telephone exchange.  And I love this picture in a lot of inexpressible ways.

Some day I want to have a wall in my home hung with fascinating old pictures of strangers.

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Adventurtimes!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

So I went to Seattle for the Pop Conference!  It was pretty successful, I’d say:  I met lots of cool folks, and managed to not make out with Chuck Klosterman or similar (this was facilitated by the fact that Chuck Klosterman was not there; and I was accompanied by my gentleman caller, who may have frowned upon such behaviour).  And I gave a paper about Lady Gaga, so that was pretty neat.  I have come so far as a scholar!  It was but a year ago that my students in the LGBT Pop class were all turning in terrible papers about Poker Face and I was like “who is the Lady Gaga that the young folk are so excited about?”  Ah, yes.  Don’t say we’re not busy doing important things over here in Musicologyland.

And also I think you’ll be able to download and listen to my talk on iTunes University!  I’ll let you know if this actually happens.  This is pretty cool, but also slightly mortifying, because it means that my technological snafus are forever immortalized, as is the moment in my presentation when I meant to say Jay-Z but accidentally said Kanye instead.  But oh well.  Nobody’s perfect.

I accidentally managed to book us into the Shepard Fairey room at the hipster hotel.  I mean, I intentionally booked us into the hipster hotel (it was cheap and has free waffles at breakfastime!) but I did not bargain for the Shepard Fairey room, which meant having to cope with this wallpaper for four days:

Also, this icon, which clearly indicates “milk bottle, present, Hershey Kiss,” was on the little cabinet in the room, and the cabinet did not contain any of these things, so I must assume it is hipster code for “towels, condoms, coffee,” which is what the cabinet did contain.  MYSTERIOUS!  I am still disappointed that I didn’t get any Hershey’s Kisses, but I probably shouldn’t complain because there were, indeed, those waffles.

As is my wont, I dragged my gentleman caller stumbling through Seattle on a steady diet of neon and donuts:

And we went to the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company, where I bought a map of the known universe.

I am ten years behind in emails right now – Canadian friends, I will write you tomorrow, I swear it on the ghost of Annette Funicello’s girlish figure.

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“You smell nice” “I washed my hair for you”

Friday, April 2, 2010

Dear Ladies, Unicorns, and others,

Gosh!  I just realized that I’ve been a jerk and forgot to write all about how that Cherpumple turned out!  I’m a terrible scientist, it’s true.  So, um, yeah, it wound up looking something like this:

So, one thing that I hadn’t bargained on is that my oven is terrible.  It is bad.  It heats unevenly, it is too small, it is all kinds of ungood things.  Because of this, we ran into a small problem with the batter not cooking all the way through.  In and of itself, this is not a huge issue, as god knows gooey cake is good cake.  The problem is that the uncooked batter added a lot of weight to each individual cake layer.  So once they were stacked on top of one another, an event of geological proportions took place, and we all stood around in awe as the Cherpumple collapsed upon itself.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that means we didn’t eat it.  Obviously we ate it.  I had to serve it with a ladle, but dammit, we ate that cake.

We ate that cake so hard.

I’ve been working too hard these days.  I think it’s becoming a problem.  I remember a time, long ago, when it was the weekend and that meant that I didn’t have to do any work.  Now I’m at a point where I am literally on a two-day-workweek schedule – I only have to go to campus Tuesdays, for seminar, and Wednesdays, to teach – but my resultant five day weekend is really more like five days of neverending busywork with not much to show for it.  This seems somehow unfair because I worked really hard to get to the point where I could have five day weekends, didn’t I?  The point was that I’d be able to spend them doing things, like, I don’t know, actually doing things that don’t involve sitting at a computer developing repetitive strain injuries.  I’ve also gotten really bad at feeding myself.  I get home from school and I’m like, oh, I’ll just work on this lesson plan for a half hour and then eat dinner, and suddenly it’s 12:30 at night and I’m eating a tuna sandwich.

I’m also having an identity crisis because I’m teaching the first class that I’ve designed myself, and my personal politics (of the feminist, pinko, commie variety) are front and center, and I feel like I constantly need to justify those politics, for some reason.  Like, I know why it’s important to teach this class about 1960s girl culture.  But I feel that no matter how many times and how many different ways I explain that it’s important, my students are all sitting there thinking “you’re just talking about this stuff because you’re a man-hating feminist and also you don’t know anything about real music, like the White Album or Pet Sounds, or whatever whiny white boy rock we’re deifying today.”  So I have these really great moments where I’m like, “hey, think about it, The Beatles were basically the Jonas Brothers in 1964, so maybe we should stop hatin’ on the tweens?” (only more eloquently, and also with the internal logic of that statement explained) and they seem to get it, but then I go home and I’m filled with self-doubt and I feel like I need to start the next class by explaining that just because this semester we’re learning about things that teenage girls liked doesn’t mean that boys haven’t also made worthwhile contributions to society.  Which is stupid because the entire university is about boys’ contributions to society, but it’s just so normalized and invisible.

But at least somewhere, in the world, there are layer cakes with pies in them.  Also, I want a kitten.

The title of this post is an actual exchange that takes place between Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue in “A Summer Place.” God bless 1959.

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34 different kinds of rootbeer, in my fridge, right now, waiting.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

It’s true:  there are 34 kinds of rootbeer in the fridge, in preparation for the forthcoming Rootbeer Tasting Soiree (the rootbeer will be accompanied by what is certain to be a terrible (where”terrible” means “wonderful”) film, starring Rock Hudson as a young soda jerk in love with Piper Laurie.  Sounds great).  Also, hilariously, Mr. John Nese, owner of the Soda Pop Stop, helped us carry our collection of exotic rootbeers to the car, because he is gentlemanly.

There are few things in the world that are better than having 34 different varieties of rootbeer in the kitchen.  However, there have been other good things going on as well.  I just got back from San Diego, where it was hazy and sleepy and I did a lot of swimming in a hotel pool in the nighttime.  We saw a baby panda at the zoo, but, alas, the slow loris was hiding somewhere in its enclosure and wouldn’t come out to shower us with cuteness.  Luckily, the internet continues to deliver.

Also, I’ve been planning my girl group class, which starts this week and is going to be wonderful fun.  We’re starting with Gidget.  I feel that it’s important for the undergraduates to see excerpts from Gidget Goes Hawaiian, the  moral of which is “don’t talk to anyone, ever, or everyone will think you’re a slut, also, try surfing,” as it provides important context regarding representations of girl identity in the early 1960s.

Discussion Questions:

Who is cuter?  Slow loris or Maru, the internet’s best greatest cat? (Category of “internet’s greatest cat” was bestowed upon Maru by a non-partisan panel of internet cat video experts, consisting of myself.)

How much rootbeer would a slow loris drink if a slow loris were larger than a bottle of rootbeer?

Why is Gidget played by a different actress in every Gidget movie, when clearly Deborah Walley is the best Gidget?  And why is It’s a Bikini World (hilarious, quasi-feminist beach party movie, involving a skateboard race, and cameo from the Animals who perform “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place” at the Haunted House, which was once a monster-themed club with giant papier mache lizard creatures, and is now a porn theatre , her Greatest Film Ever, not available on DVD?

Who wants a postcard with a panda on it?  I have three left, I’ll even sign them with a lipstick kiss so your mailman thinks you’re getting love letters from a Hollywood starlet.  Ooh, gossip and excitement could circulate about you in your very own hometown!

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Monsters and burgers and pie, oh my.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

You know that scene in Ghost World (aka Still My Favourite Film After All These Years Because I Remain an Angsty 17 Year Old At Heart) where Enid and Rebecca are in the diner and Melorra, that really irritatingly earnest girl who is exactly like every perky human that I hate (because actually I am a Cynical Old 76 Year Old At Heart) comes in and is like “this place is so funky”?  HERE LOOK, I found you that scene in case you forgot – the part I’m talking about starts at 2:30:

This basically actually happened in real life the other day.  We were at Pie ‘n’ Burger and this girl came in and she WAS Melorra and she said to the dude she was with “I love this place!  It’s so…retro!” in exactly that perky, uncynical tone of voice that I so often fail to understand.

So anyhow, that was hilarious.  And Pie ‘n’ Burger was basically a dream come true.  Look at how photogenic this cheeseburger is!  I honestly cannot stop looking at this picture.

And then I had a slice of butterscotch meringue pie (I KNOW, right?) that was so delicious that I forgot to take a picture.  You will just have to go to Pie ‘n’ Burger and see for yourself!

And then we went to the monster park in San Gabriel!  (See this post I wrote for Metblogs for further details.)  Here I am conquering a giant cement octopus in the name of all womankind:

And here is Nikki, taming having just tamed the wild pink whale:

I love giant things made of cement.  They’re the one thing I can actually be earnest about in this day and age.

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Look at what’s in store for SCIENCE!

Monday, March 8, 2010

HEY EVERYONE HAVE YOU SEEN THIS:

Yeah, so, that’s a Cherpumple.  I’m going to make one!  Maybe later this week or sometime next week!  And obviously this process will be live-blogged, because I haven’t done any cardiac-inducing science experiments for the internet for a while.  So you have that to look forward to.  Awesome, right?  If I had my druthers it would be dessert following a main course of a giant boiled ostrich egg, sliced like a ham.  Sadly, though, I do not always have my druthers, nor do I have an ostrich egg because they were charging $40 for them at the ostrich farm.

Ok, other awesome:  saw a screening of the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts the other night and they were so great.  In my opinion, though, the Irish were ROBBED of that Oscar by the French, but what do I know?

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Someone give this lady a cookie.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

This quarter could end just about now, as far as I’m concerned.

I did my exams!  Writing my exams was seriously the best week of my entire life.  Imagine, if you will, being given seven days in which you do not have to go anywhere nor talk to anyone whom you do not wish to; imagine that during those seven days your task is to write and write and write about the things that you love the most in the world; imagine that during this time people just bring you food so you don’t actually have to cook anything; imagine that it is really the way you would live your life, given the opportunity.  Basically, it was so good.  My exam questions were great and made me feel really happy about my dissertation committee, and I got to write about Dusty Springfield and Lady Gaga in the same essay.

So, the transition back to real life has been weird and stupid, mostly.  Mostly I resent all the dumb crap I have to do even more than I did before, and I’m so stressed out that my entire body hurts, and all I want to do is finalize the goddamn reading list for my class next quarter, but do you think I have time for that?  Of course I don’t have time for that.  ALSO, I am mad at the post office because apparently my mailing address has become a black hole into which things that are mailed to me (ie:  Valentine’s presents special ordered for Gentlemen Callers, polka-dotted vintage dresses from Etsy, birthday cheques from Grandmothers) disappear, never to be seen from again, which is obnoxious and stupid.

On the bright side, this movie arrived in the mail today (I had it sent to me at school, where mail still works, despite the budget cuts), and, when I finally have time to sit down and watch it (ie: when my dissertation is finished) I’m sure it will be the best night of my life because it is the Lost Skeleton of spy thrillers:

Oh, I feel better knowing that I’ve blogged.  I’ve been feeling majorly angsty about not blogging lately.  What a weird thing to feel angsty about!  Could I be addicted to the internet?  Oh, heavens no.

THINGS THAT ARE GOOD THAT I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO:

Friday night quality time with best friends Mulder and Scully;

We are going to San Diego over spring break and I get to go see panda bears at the zoo;

Making Out!  Let’s hear it for making out with a nice beardy boy on a regular basis;

Gin martinis!  These exist, thank the lord.

Oh, also, THINGS THAT WERE GREAT THAT HAPPENED EARLIER THIS WEEK:

Met Marilyn Wann!  Super duper fat activist who invented the muumuu of the month club and is thus a true heroine, if ever there was one;

Ok, fine, I’m going to bed now.

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