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Someone on flickr just questioned my street cred!

Anyway, the Rick Wilhite thing on Saturday was pretty fun. There was a decent turn-out, but there was a mass exodus around 1 a.m. or so. Very strange.

Rick Wilhite and his aura played many good records, including “Numbers” by Kraftwerk as a special treat.

Jwan’s ear! Jwan encouraged me to wear high heels more often but dude, I was practically in tears by the end of the night. Ballet made my feet all wide and thick. They are not dainty enough for girly shoes.

Frank showed up! He was in town for a friend’s wedding! I really need to get my teeth cleaned!

The event was all multimedia n’at. This painting was created on-site and I kind of want it for my dining room. There was also a sneak peek at Paul Dang’s movie Still City. Paul’s been working on the movie for awhile and I hope he’s able to release it soon because it looks pretty awesome. I love the title, too. It’s a play on words. People from this area tend to pronounce “steel” as “still” (ie, Stillers instead of Steelers). Imagery-wise it’s also pretty great. The three rivers flow through us constantly, but Pittsburgh is still, right in the middle of it. And Pittsburgh, for better or worse, never goes anywhere. Take that however you want. It just contains this weird mixture of people who are creative and loyal and cynical and interesting and just all around kind of weird.

Tee-ball started yesterday and that means that I no longer get to sleep in on weekends. The fact that I then sit and watch the baby be all cute for two hours mostly makes up for it, though. I forgot my camera, but trust me when I tell you that tee-ball is adorable. The baby, being a veteran at this point with one season of tee-ball already under his belt, got to swing at some live pitches and actually connected with the ball twice. That means that his hitting skills have already surpassed mine by 3,000%.

Youth baseball is so fun in our neighborhood if for no other reason than the people-watching. The yinzer population is high and yesterday a woman walked past us and, in a pristine Pittsburgh accent, said to her unhappy child, “Stawp cryin’. I bawt yew some Cawmbows.” You plain-tongued folks would pronounce it, “Stop crying. I bought you some Combos.” Awesome on multiple levels.

After tee-ball, I had to go to a “ladies’ lunch.” My grandmother invites all of my hammy-armed aunts (and me!) to lunch at her country club twice a year. Well, “invites” is a strong word. In my case, anyway. Usually my invitation comes in the form of a phone call in which my mom or grandmother tells me, “The ladies’ lunch is on x date. You have to go.” And it’s remarkable because the lunches are always smack dab in the middle of my busiest times. I’ve bowed out of the last few, but even though I told those wannabe matriarchs that I have, like, four projects due for school plus other shit I need to do, they still insisted. My mom told me that my absence would be disrespectful, which…you know fucking whatever. I’m not going to get into it, but that brand of manipulation really doesn’t sit well with me.

Me: “Dude, I don’t have time for this shit. Those lunches always take four hours.”

Mom: “It will not take four hours. We’ll stay for lunch and that’s it.”

So I went. And FIVE hours later I finally got home. The husband and the baby and I went to the Waterfront to try to buy shoes since we’re all sporting some stinky, disintegrating kicks. DSW was, of course, closed at that point so we just zipped over to the movie theater to catch Iron Man.

Dudes. That movie is kind of the shit. It’s all about redefining the American Hero. And also the CGI is rad and Robert Downey, Jr. is amazing and also BOOM SMASH RAHHHH FLYING!

They showed the preview for the new Indiana Jones movie and I don’t know if I can get more impatient for a movie to come out. I am so geeked for some Nazis and for some offensively generic tribal people.

We caught up with the rest of the country last night and watched Juno, finally. I’m totally smitten with that movie…and Ellen Page and Diablo Cody and Michael Cera and Jason Reitman and Olivia Thirlby and pretty much anyone who had anything to do with it. Angela told me yesterday that she just watched it and had totally cried. I admitted that I had my reservations about it, that maybe it was going to be a pregnant Garden State, which I really didn’t like. But I was completely stunned at how fantastic Juno was. I’m sure it holds more of an emotional punch for people who have gone through an unplanned pregnancy when they were young and how fucked your mind gets because of it and how people say the most hurtful things to you. For people who haven’t, it might just be kind of cute. But I still thought the dialogue and the story were wonderful and Ellen Page was seriously robbed at the Oscars. She is just amazing and I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t gotten pregnant and given the baby up for adoption at 16. She nailed the whole thing.

I think I really started to unravel when Juno drives home after an upsetting visit with the baby’s adoptive parents and she pulls off to the side of the road and just sobs. I had that cry, several times, when I was pregnant. Not for those reasons, but I remember feeling like there was no ground for me to stand on, that I was totally untethered, and worst of all, it was all my doing. I just wanted someone to understand how I felt, but I knew that no one possibly could, not even the people closest to me.

Hmph. Well. This is way deeper than I really wanted to get on a Sunday afternoon.

I think I shall rename this blog fuckihavesomuchshittodo.com because fuck, I have so much shit to do! And it’s all I talk about!

As a special bonus for stressing myself out over crap that I (stupidly) willfully entered into (job, school, motherhood, existence as a functioning member of society), my lip is breaking out into a really sexy cold sore. The upside is that those really disgusting first two days of looking like your local meth addict turning tricks at the Best Western will be spent at home, where I will threaten my family by holding their toothbrushes thisclose to my lip. The downside is that I will look like your local meth addict turning tricks at the Best Western. Also, this shit hurts. Also also, I was kind of hoping for some adult time to alleviate the stress, but nothing says lovin’ HSV 1.

Anyway, we went to see The Roots last night. They were performing for Tech Fair. I’m sad to report that The Roots…kind of suck now, which is unfortunate since I stood around and frantically searched for the other members of my party for nearly two hours and then stood for another two hours while those hip hop darlings did their best impression of a drunken Doors performance circa nineteen-seventy-hell. For awhile I didn’t think it was so bad, but 20 minutes into their psychotic rendition of “Masters of War,” I wanted to choke someone. Granted, I was standing next to a group of young Anna Nicole wannabes and a couple who were making out the whole time, since, you know, “Masters of War” is the classic make-out jam.

We’re watching Moog, which is certainly a fascinating story. But I feel my ears start to buzz when I watch/hear about things like this.

Like, the husband will explain synthesizer stuff that he’s working on or tell me about some work he’s doing in one of his engineering classes and I hear, “So you know when you oscillate triglycerides and the Rubik’s cube osmosifies with pi and then square it zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz?”

Or like when someone asks me if I have change for a five. “Um, I don’t know. Here’s some quarters. Does that help?”

Christ. I need to just get one of those “Math is hard!” Barbies and get it over with.

Of course it must not be that fascinating since the husband is fast asleep on the couch.

Last night, I watched some French movies on IFC, namely L’Auberge Espagnole and Les Poupees Russes.

They were mildly entertaining, but I find that if I don’t understand the language, I’m much more easily distracted. All I know is that I want Audrey Tautou’s apartment. And to make sounds from the back of my throat without sounding like I’m gagging.

The baby stayed at the mother-in-law’s house last night since she picked him up from school and watched him while we schooled and worked. He has off today, so instead of taking him home, putting him right to bed, waking him, and then taking him right back to the MIL’s house, we just let him stay put.

I miss him.

My body is also acting very strangely today. I was ravenous and scarfed down my lunch a little after 11 and I’m still kind of hungry. I anticipate foraging for food by 3 p.m. That should be fun.

I’m also simultaneously craving sex and sleep and I can’t do much for either craving at the moment. Argh.

I’m feeling morose today for some reason, so I’m listening to the “Coffee House” station on Sirius. They’re playing “Baby Can I Hold You,” by Tracy Chapman. Ugh. Up next: fetal position and quiet weeping.

But it works because No Country for Old Men comes out on DVD today, so I can revel in the Cormac McCarthyism of it all.

Broken in a good way. It’s officially spring break! Ugh, such a relief.

Last night, we watched the first episode of this new show called New Amsterdam that we DVR’ed the other day. It sounded pretty intriguing in the CNN article.

About ten minutes into it, I realized something interesting: I fucking hate that show. It’s just so corny and melodramatic and embodies everything I hate about network TV. And I started ranting about, “What the hell am I going to enjoy watching after Sunday when The Wire ends? Seriously. How will anything ever compare to that show?”

Obviously, nothing ever will. The Wire really is sort of a freak of art and television. Something that monumentally wonderful and tragic and god damned true only comes along maybe once in a lifetime. But it got me thinking, and I was still rolling around some thoughts from an interview I did last night with the guy behind Tiger Lou, Rasmus Kellerman. His music is fairly upbeat but still kind of dark and he noted that some of the things that are inspiring him lately are the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the movie Wonder Boys, which is one of his favorites.

Think of some of the best movies that came out this past year…There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. Radiohead released In Rainbows. And I’ve been gravitating to art that can only be described as bleak. Nearly everyone I know and read describes feeling a nagging blueness. Even with the upcoming election, which will finally free us from the shameful Bush administration and possibly give us a president who is black or a woman, something I never would have expected to see in my lifetime, there isn’t much optimism to be had. I fear that the change that we all crave is still years away, if it’s there at all.

I think we’re heading into an age that pop-historians might later call The Great Melancholy. Translation: everyone is fucking bummed out and disgusted. And I think we’re starting to see this in the art that we create. The only genuine feelings seem to be those of cynicism, especially since the people chosen to give us hope (memoirists of survival come to mind) turn out to be complete liars. We’re being sold fake hope, fake perseverance. And we’re so congested with bullshit that our resistance is low. Bring it on. We’ll buy it. Then we’ll get pissed for being duped because we’re idiots.

Am I getting too deep and morose for a Friday? Sorry. Here, have some Izzard (who we’re going to see on May 21st! EEEEEE!)

I watched: Waitress, which was cute and I really liked all of the actors, but the plot felt uh, half-baked (snicker); The Darjeeling Limited, which I really liked…”We went on a spiritual journey, but that didn’t really pan out…”; Re-Animator, which The Prestige ripped off hardcore for its cat scenes; the latest episode of The Wire, which just blew my mind and made me cry about three different times.

I made: banana cupcakes with honey-cinnamon frosting. They were very good, though I thought the frosting was a tad too sweet. I’ll probably add more cinnamon next time.

I slept: a total of 18 hours between Friday night and Sunday morning. It was so needed. I actually feel not like death today.