kdiddy.org » plop culture

yo

kdiddy — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:46:37 +0000

So, hey. It’s been a minute? No big, I just became a little overwhelmed with work stuff and needed to simplify life where I could. This meant more or less taking a hiatus from the internet, minus my usual spewing of brilliant nuggets onto Twitter when the spirit moved me.

Physically, I’m doing okay. My insurance had had enough of me going to that physical therapy snakeoil treatment, so I’m basically trying to make sure that my neck doesn’t get any worse the next few months and hopefully will continue healing. It seems to be doing okay and I mostly only notice any discomfort or pain if I sit for too long or if I get too ambitious during yoga and try to do like plow pose or something.

Neck says, "No."

What’s kind of really upsetting is that the combination of my neck injury, the required period of inactivity, Christmas, and the god-I’m-depressed-about-this-let-me-eat-this-stick-of-butter methods of dealing mean that I have more or less gained back all of the weight that I lost after working so hard at getting healthy and active. I’m bummed and trying to do what I can about it, but I easily get stuck in the, “I’ve ruined all of my hard work and now I shall be overweight forever,” rut of self-loathing. Also, last night I made the extremely poor decision to watch the first episode of the first season of The Biggest Loser (I know, I know) and one of the contestants was my size exactly. That was upsetting.

ANYWAY disordered thinking aside, things are okay. The husband and the kid and I are trekking to New York this weekend (no, that is not an invitation to rob my house). They’re going to go see Kraftwerk while the sister-in-law and I will spread our distinct brand of classiness all over Queens.

Now that spring is settling in, I’m getting excited about stuff that will be happening the next few months. On the 26th, presumably still glowing (read: scrubbing the grime off) from NYC, the husband and I are going to go see Big Freedia. You might recognize her as the singer in the episode of Treme when Davis and Aunt Mini go to a bounce show. She is also the creator of this wonderfulness.

Speaking of Azz, I made the husband watch a documentary from 2000 called American Pimp that had recently popped up on Netflix. It was obvious that it had influenced parts of Idiocracy (the Upgrayedd character) and “The Playa Hater’s Ball” from Chappelle’s Show. I, of course, fell asleep midway through. This morning, I asked the husband if he had watched the rest of it and if it was any good.

“Yeah. Great soundtrack. It was just kind of way too long for what it was. They just kept explaining the same thing over and over again.” Then he sighed, “Like, ‘Yes, we get it. You can’t show the bitch no love.’”

the things you notice when watching old episodes of mad men

kdiddy — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:07:20 +0000

Having finished Downton Abbey a few weeks ago and still aching for costume dramas, our heroine returned to the offices of 1960 Sterling Cooper. After Roger Sterling suffered a heart attack while in the arms of a young model, Don Draper lingered in the hospital’s hallway. He noticed a commercial for Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy on the TV in the waiting room. As it played, our heroine’s ears perked up at the mention of a familiar phrase.

At 00:28, someone asked President Eisenhower about Nixon’s contributions while he, Eisenhower, has been The Decider.

“But…I thought…there was only one Decider,” our heroine whispered to herself.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

This changes everything!

You will please forgive our heroine’s goofiness. She had a rough week, physically, and now her uterus is trying to start some shit.

well, i think we’re hilarious

kdiddy — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:03:39 +0000

Frank and I communicate via text message almost everyday. We rarely, if ever, discuss anything important or substantial. It’s kind of like our iPhones are a perpetual 9th grade classroom and our iMessages are the notes that we pass back and forth. Occasionally, they give me a glimpse of how goofy we are.

"Watch" should be "watching." Stupid fat fingers.

I think it’s worth noting that this conversation took place on Valentine’s Day, which means that the husband and I were partaking in a very romantic viewing of that Michael J. Fox classic. It’s been on cable a lot recently and for some reason, I can’t not watch it. The husband and I discussed how popular it was when it came out, which is weird considering how little sense a lot of it makes in retrospect. I’ve also decided that there are far too few characters named “Boof” in popular culture. Also also wik, how awesome is the Beavers’ coach? (Be sure to note the fan with his junk hanging out at the end.)

everyone has lost their minds

kdiddy — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:51:32 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve heard but it’s been crazy hot here this week. As such, everyone is becoming a little…punchy.

For example, me taking a picture of myself first thing in the morning just so I can show you how my hair has been acting.

We don’t have air conditioning in our house and this is one of the few days out of the summer where that just sucks. So there’s lots of ice water being consumed and cold showers being taken. Last night, I climbed into bed and realized that there was no way I was going to fall asleep without cooling myself down somehow and de-stickifying my neck and cleavage. So, I hit the shower and then got back into bed. That meant that I was putting my wavy hair to bed wet and then waking up in the humidity. The results were some kind of science experiment.

If it wasn’t so messy, I would have just rocked this Shirley Temple ‘do, but it was obvious that my pillow had styled my hair so I clawed a brush through it.

Downstairs, I set about getting my coffee, breakfast, and lunch together for the day and I was supervised by my cat, who I had forgotten to feed yesterday. Today, he made sure that I wouldn’t make the same mistake.

That’s his food bin that he’s sitting on top of. And he meowed at me in a very direct tone. He’s very subtle.

After I got myself and my hair out the door, we rode in to work. Close to my office, we gaped at a man who was easily over 6 feet tall riding along on a Razor scooter.

Like this, but completely absurd.

The image of him hunched over and kick-pushing his way to, presumably, educate the youth of America has now burned itself into my brain. Imagining him kissing the wife goodbye, all, “Off to bring home the bacon, honey! Hey, son, I’m taking the Razor today,” makes my head hurt. Zombies can’t be far behind.

* * *

We went to see Harry Potter last night and the baby got all dressed up for the occasion.

He is currently devouring the books and while I don’t share his enthusiasm for the franchise, I’ve found almost all of the movies to be pretty enjoyable. I didn’t sob through the last hour of the movie like the grown women in front of me, though. I mean, I get being attached to characters that way, but histrionics in public are a little unnerving.

get yourself cultured at bricolage

kdiddy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:05:01 +0000

One of my favoritest people on the internet is Gayle. As she so hilariously puts it in her bio on MoxieBird, “she works as an actor and writer to support her passion for secretarial work.” A few weeks ago, she told me that the Bricolage Production Company was going to be having a blogger night to celebrate the opening of their newest play Hunter Gatherers. It had been awhile since Gayle and I had hung out, and there were going to be some free drinks, so I agreed.

I had never been to Bricolage, but it’s a very cool space downtown with an intimate stage, plus a resident dog, Odie. There was a quiz before the show started to find out if you were a hunter or a gatherer. I am an Ultra Gatherer, which they didn’t have an explicit sticker for. So I hacked mine with a ballpoint pen, hence the horrific scrawling.

So, the play…

Two couples have been friends since high school and have continue their annual dinner through their 30s. On this particular night, all four people are at a crossroads in their lives and none are satisfied with keeping things the way they are, no matter how badly they want to believe that they’re living the lives that they’re supposed to. Over the course of the evening, they each strip away their middle class veneers and get down to their base human natures. They’re shocked at how primal they really are as they allow themselves to indulge in carnivorous urges of all kinds: sex, procreation, alpha male posturing, and actually eating meat.

Yuppies breaking down might not sound particularly funny but the writing was quick-witted and hilarious. And the actors were inspirationally good. As in, I wanted to become an actor SO BAD watching them on the stage, fully engrossed and kicking ass.

Hunter Gatherers will run at Bricolage now through May 7th and I highly recommend that you take in a performance. As we emerge from that excessively long winter, it’s wonderful to be reminded of what an amazing cultural community we have here in Pittsburgh.

To get you started on your spring/summer activities, I would like to offer you the chance to win two tickets to a performance of Hunter Gatherers. All you have to do is leave a comment here and I’ll pick a winner at random next Friday, April 22nd. Good luck!

non-sequential narrative

kdiddy — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:45:27 +0000

If you are a cashier at a coffee shop/cafe and you suddenly resume your conversation about meatloaf with a co-worker who is invisible to customers behind a stack of boxes, some confusion may occur. You see, the frazzled secretary waiting to pay for the somewhat dodgy sushi lunch will assume that your question, “So, you don’t like it with gravy?” is regarding her impending meal. And she may be overly polite and will produce an answer, despite the terrifying nonsensical context, and reply, “Um…no, I don’t think I’ve ever put gravy on sushi.” And you and your co-worker, who has suddenly peered from behind the boxes to study this odd creature who allows words to just tumble out of her mouth about meatloaf and gravy and sushi, will suddenly become just as confused as the now thoroughly embarrassed secretary. And eye contact will no longer be bearable.

So, you know, don’t do that.

* * *

The husband whisked me away for a restorative weekend of food and walks and TV because I’ve been really sad lately. We watched many episodes of Food Network’s offerings to the reality TV gods, including Chopped, Cupcake Wars, and…I don’t know…manufactured drama over fondant. Much like the tic of reality stars of other competition-based shows to say, “I’m not here to make friends,” competitive chefs have a tendency to say, “Go big or go home.” This makes sense when you’re talking about cupcakes, as they’re known for their gigantic size. The husband, who doesn’t absorb bumper sticker folk wisdom or cliches very readily, which is odd since one of the first gifts he ever gave me was a book of cliches, took note of this repetitive boast: “They keep saying…like, ‘If you’re gonna go, go big.’”

We took great delight in reconstructing cliches in this manner over the rest of the weekend.

There’s a box and you’re outside it. Thinking.

That’s evil but less so than this other evil.

If there’s something that you can do now, you should do it and not wait because procrastinating is doing stuff later.

Mi casa es mi casa but you can come over whenever.

* * *

We watched most of Sex and the City 2 last night. It was offensive. And terrible. And offensively terrible. And two and half hours long. The husband and I have a really unhealthy habit of watching particularly bad movies for the sheer delight of giving them the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment.

“What happened in the first one?”

“Uhhhh…you know, honestly, I think I blacked out in the middle of it. But it was also two and a half hours long and I remember the realization that I had been watching it for hours depressing the hell out of me.”

Upon seeing Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda peek around a corner wearing burqas:

“I know that it is not in any way okay to say this, but I’m pretty sure this is why planes get flown into buildings.”

“Maybe the 9/11 terrorists saw this movie and traveled back in time to try to stop it.”

“Like Terminator?”

“Yeah…I think.”

“Maybe John Connor wrote Sex and the City 2?”

Upon watching Carrie, insecure in her marriage after confessing to kissing her old flame in Abu Dhabi, come home to a Big-less apartment and the TV missing:

“I bet he’s just out buying a new TV.”

“I hope she goes totally Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale and is halfway through burning all of his clothes when he comes home.”

Pondering the last five minutes of the movie, in which all plot development abruptly stopped and the writers just threw all of the characters back together happily with their spouses:

“Huh. They must have been two hours and 25 minutes into the movie when they realized that it was going absolutely fucking nowhere and were like, ‘Okay, let’s just end.’”

“Orphan is coming on. That movie was also terrible. Come to think of it, Orphan was similar to Sex and the City 2. This girl is being weird and killing people for over two hours and you’re supposed to be thinking, ‘What could possibly cause this little girl to go on this rampage with this ridiculous accent?’” And the big reveal is that it’s because she’s actually 35 and you’re like, ‘Uh…’ That’s not even a twist. Someone being 35 is not a twist. That’s just starting a whole other movie.”

she’s such a good catholic, father. she loves the taste of communion wafers.

kdiddy — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:35:07 +0000

Who else do you know that watches shit like this and starts thinking Deep Thoughts about sexuality, gender, and religion?

I posted to MamaPop last week about a UK show called Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding according to some sites) and wailed about how it wasn’t available to watch in the US. I forgot, of course, that this is the internet and anything can be had if you know the right people. I won’t reveal my sources, but a few discs with some episodes arrived in my mailbox last week and I spent Saturday afternoon devouring them.

It’s pretty wild. The gypsies and travelers regard themselves as very strict and traditional. Gender roles are severely defined and haven’t changed much in the face of several waves of feminism and a sexual revolution. Girls marry young and move immediately into their roles as homemakers. They do this in their mid-to-late teens, which is around the time that many girls begin exploring their sexuality. So they’re able to say with some degree of authority that there is no pre-marital sex.

Because of the young marital age, gypsies and travelers seem to be far more tolerant about outward displays of sexuality extremely early in life. I watched, slack-jawed, as a group of 8-year-old girls celebrated their cousin’s First Holy Communion by grinding in high heels and tiny skirts and tops. Their parents and grandparents sat and watched and beamed with joy, the same expressions that they might have if they were watching the kids play Duck, Duck, Goose. They’re not concerned about the early sexualization of the girls because a) they’re only a few years out from being married anyway and b) they’re merely imitating the behavior of presumably chaste adolescents. The boys display a sense of territoriality by participating in “grabbing,” a courtship ritual that sounds a lot like accepted assault to me.

I wish the show would explore these gender roles and sexuality conventions more thoroughly, but they spend a lot of time on the bridal attire, if for no other reason than how absurd it is. I’m really curious about the general attire of the young people, which is, again, sexually provocative but to the ends of securing a husband, and other outfits that almost look like stereotypical/racially offensive gypsy costumes that you might see around Halloween in the US.

Anyway, all that pondering aside, I suddenly found myself feeling a bit of a pang during the Communion scenes. It occurred to me that the baby is around the age, perhaps even a bit older, that he would be making his First Communion if we were raising him Catholic. I remember being extremely excited about mine and in the context of this show I began to wonder how much of that was because of the dress and the veil that I got to wear. We looked like mini-brides and were giddy about that. But the important thing about my Communion outfit was that it was my mom’s. I was the latest in a long of people who had made the same sacrament. It was presumed that I would continue the tradition…until I knew that I wouldn’t.

Parenting and life are so scary sometimes, that maybe traditions, even those surrounded by yucky things like inequity, are comforting because they give us some road map that was laid down by people who lived and took care of their families with what seems to be a degree of certainty. Of course, the old ways were once new and there’s nothing stopping us from forging new traditions that are more appropriate for how we feel about and experience life. But I can’t help but look at even the most ridiculous, competitive dress for a young gypsy girl and think there’s something at least a little nice about it, the sheer celebration of survival of it.

winning at parenting/the pestilence continueth

kdiddy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:30:42 +0000

The baby has not had a full day of school in close to two weeks due to various things like holidays, school closings, doctor’s appointments, and Surprise! Your Strep Test Is Positive! parties. I’m not entirely convinced that he has retained the ability to read.

On Sunday, I started displaying symptoms of the husband’s Man Cold that he was just getting over.

This resulted in me doing things like NotLaundry and NotGrocery Shopping. The husband and I both ended up passed out on the couch for a good two hours in the afternoon. During that time, the baby turned on Adventure Time and helped himself to a bag of Cheetos (aka our AFC Championship buffet). I half-opened one eye about 1.5 hours into my nap and mumbled, “Yo. Take it easy on those Cheetos, dude,” and went back to sleep. It was a proud moment for me as I have long yearned to reach the same level of parental competence as Britney Spears.

After a night of sleep that could only be described as, “Really weird…and moist,” I went to work yesterday fueled entirely by DayQuil. Aside from being rather drippy and cycling in and out of sweating spells, I felt surprisingly okay. But last night, I started to feel kind of woozy. I told the husband this and he cackled and told me that I had not yet reached the zenith of my sickness. Yay.

Speaking of parenting, over the winter break, I started watching…nay, devouring episodes of Intervention on Netflix. The husband finds this habit of mine entirely absurd and even I reached a point about halfway through season three where I thought, “I can’t watch this anymore.” The situation was so disturbing and I had a pretty sick feeling that we only knew the half of it. Just to be clear, I’m not referring to the episode featuring Sylvia, the alcoholic Southern belle. Though that episode was disturbing because when they first showed her cracking open a mini-bottle of vodka while driving, I said, “Holy shit, is that Lucille from Arrested Development? Is this like the April Fool’s episode of Intervention?” The resemblance was that uncanny.

See what I mean?

But the whole thing has me freaked out about parenting. I mean, plenty of the people featured on the show had some really horrible experiences and I don’t think anyone can blame them for just checking out of life. But then there are some people who had relatively good existences and then blam. “My mom pushed me to get good grades so I started doing heroin. My dad criticized my cooking this one time so now I weigh 30 pounds. My mom was tired that one time and couldn’t devote her entire consciousness to me so now I’m 90% Jack Daniels.”

I’m not terrified of the baby trying alcohol or even some drugs when he’s older. But I am scared of him finding any number of my imperfect behaviors devastating and running with that to the crack house. Now, every time I shout, “DO. YOUR. HOMEWORK!” I panic and hide all of the liquor. But I know I’m oversimplifying and overreacting. If something as crazy as addiction could be simply boiled down to bad parenting, I doubt it would be so hard to overcome. I just…I just see a bunch of people who love ya like crazy and they feel like they’re losin’ ya.

(Sigh. Right after I finished writing this, I had to angrily reclaim my iPhone from the baby after I asked for it three times so now I’m wondering what in our house can be used to cook up a shot.)

what i learned from tv while convalescing

kdiddy — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:46:12 +0000

I spent most of yesterday on the couch, tooling around on the internet and watching TV, which is what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. I think the giddiness that I experience at the prospect of being able to partake in such activities without a smidgen of guilt is what jump-starts the recovery process.

I watched things that wouldn’t cause me any grief if I were to fall asleep during them. Daytime TV is made for that sort of thing, but that’s also what makes it kind of enthralling, leaving me napless. First was The Family Stone, the plot of which captured about 3% of my attention. The rest of them time I spent thinking, “God, I LOVE that house.”

Then I watched a particularly absurd episode of MTV’s True Life, which was about young psychics. One young woman was having trouble in her relationship with a guy whose name I believe was Squash because he didn’t believe in her abilities. There was also the not insignificant issue of her Christianity and her psychic gifts were not in line with the Bible. Squash went to Chattanooga to buy guns and then they broke up over the phone. She started dating a guy she met at a psychic expo and made out on camera, but then broke up two weeks later. (Insert joke here about why she didn’t see that coming.)

There’s a soap opera channel and they were showing an episode from the first season of Beverly Hills 90210. I realize now that the only reason that I ever liked that show was because I was 12 and a moron. I wanted to smack Brenda so badly and Jason Priestley does nothing but furrow his eyebrows the whole time.

At some point in all of this, I saw a commercial for Rent-a-Center starring Troy Aikman and Hulk Hogan. The, um, plot was that Troy talks up the great deals at Rent-a-Center for a few seconds and then Hulk Hogan wanders into the frame wearing an elf costume. He then utters the words, “I have an elf wedgie.” And that’s it. That’s their commercial. That’s how a company chose to sell themselves. I have an elf wedgie. If viewing this commercial caused you to consider patronizing a Rent-a-Center, please drop a bag of hammers on your foot.

Later on that night, the husband and I ended up watching Spies Like Us, which is way more hilarious than I remember. We were cracking up over the training sequence, particularly the Radical Vertical Impact Simulation exercise.

We then ceased being able to breathe when the husband read the comments for this video. Someone actually formed this thought and then typed it:

They watched the explosions, the bog of pig shit with machine gunfire, flamethrowers, g-force exercise, and an airplane smashing into the ground, and THAT was the detail that gave them trouble.

* * *

I’m taking this week off of 30 days of truth because the topics that I would tackle this week, my views on religion, politics, drugs, and alcohol, are way too long-winded to crank out during a lunch break blog post. Next time!

unsolicited endorsements

kdiddy — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:49:56 +0000

As I mentioned to an exhaustive degree during the Sonoma Grille/Seviche giveaways, this blog is not heavily marketed. So you know that if I’m touting a product it’s purely because I bought it and had a good experience.

Endorsement #1: Neutrogena skiniD. Around the time that I turned 27 or 28, I suddenly had an acne problem. I had pimples fairly regularly as a teenager, but after I had kicked puberty to the curb, my skin was pretty normal with maybe a pimple or two here or there. The adult acne wasn’t severe, but it bothered me. I was especially not fond of the dozens of small pimples that covered my now greasy forehead.

I thought about trying Proactiv, but honestly something about their commercials was unsettling to me. I’m highly perturbed by the caliber of celebrities that endorse their products, though I did get to hear Puff Daddy utter the sentence, “It really moisturizes my situation.” skiniD seemed less…Amway-ish, so I did the online quiz and within, I think, a day and a half the products arrived on my doorstep.

Full disclaimer, I have been drinking more water and eating a little bit better, so that could contribute, but my skin is pretty effing clear now. The only downside is that something in one of the products that I use has some kind of mild reaction with my sunscreen that causes a stinging sensation in my face. Not fun.

About my sunscreen: also Neutrogena. Ultra Sheer Dry Touch, spf 85 (yes, 85). Expensive, but feels awesome and I don’t get all grumpy about having to reapply it. A few weeks ago I wrote to Neutrogena gushing about how much I loved it, hoping that they’d send me some coupons. A few days later, they emailed me back with a hearty, “Thanks, glad you like it.”

So…yeah.

Endorsement #2: Blueberry Boy Bait. I made this once last summer and the husband nearly died of ecstasy. It’s so delicious. It’s called “boy bait” for, I imagine, purely alliterative reasons but I’m fairly certain that it would work on either gender. All I’m saying is that I made this sucker again last night and, well, it’s a testament to restraint that I don’t have a hickey or twelve today.

Endorsement #3: Louie. I know I mention how much I adore Louis CK a lot, but the dude is seriously one of the best comedians ever. Please watch this show. His first series, Lucky Louie, which was brilliant, was canceled after just one season and I informed him of my great disappointment over this in a rather frightening manner. Don’t make me scare him again. Watch the show. Get his ratings high. Please.