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.
The baby, the sister-in-law, and I went to the record store on Saturday and spent a good bit of time in the Jerry’s portion of the store. The baby wanted to get some records to add to his tiny starter collection.
He dug through some crates.
Then he had to, of course, listen to his selection before purchasing. His pick? “La Di Da Di”.
When we got home he wanted to watch his Kraftwerk DVD and then went about fashioning his own little Kraftwerk performance set up, complete with stand, laptop, keyboard, and mic headset.
Crappy video of his performance here, although I didn’t capture the cutest part, which was the baby cupping his hand over his mouth to sing just like the dude from Kraftwerk.
I love that kid.
My piece on Regina Spektor is in the March 2008 issue of Alternative Press. I’m very pleased with it. 🙂
I’ve been extremely productive so far.
That’s me, grabbing my cat’s face. He hates that. Note the wet hair, though. I showered!
That’s him getting up to leave, since he doesn’t really like having his picture taken. Plus, he’s pissed at me because I promised to replace the litter in his box and I haven’t yet.
Not pictured is the baby who, at the time that these pictures were taken, was downstairs in his pajamas at 3 p.m. and watching corny movies about snakes that are not Anaconda (and all star Pat Morita for some reason) on the Sci Fi Channel. Clearly, I’m setting him up for success in life. At the moment, he’s upstairs yelling his argument for wearing the same underwear for the second day in a row.
We’re supposed to go to the record store later to partake in their “grand re-opening festivities,” which I imagine consist of the husband arguing with Arnie in Squirrel Hill as opposed to East Liberty.
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!)
Since I started grad school, there have been certain periods that are more hectic than others. There’s more homework for both the husband and I or a test or a paper is due and conveniently those periods tend to coincide with especially hectic periods at work. During those times, I chuck real cooking to the side and feed my family convenience foods, stuff not purchased from the healthy, whole perimeter of the grocery store, but rather in the bloated and evil middle shelves where the processed and boxed and pre-cooked items that shamelessly flaunt their preservatives and their sodium and their high fructose corn syrup live.
This week we have a perfect storm of food challenges: busy at work, busy at school, taxes for tuition are coming out of my paycheck, and we’ve not yet received our tax refund or heard any word on the student loan that I applied for. So we’re busy and kinda poor (more than usual). Last night we had to go to the store. Not only were we out of dinner options, I was out of contact lens solution, the cat was out of litter (stink), and the baby was out of waffles and dear lord that kid can not go a day without waffles.
Since we weren’t going to get home until about 7:30, I grabbed a boxed, Complete Meal to make for dinner. I started “cooking” that while the baby and the husband worked on homework. The box called for 2 1/4 cups of hot water. I measured that out, then had to pour it out because there was a cat hair in the measuring cup, then once again because I used cold water instead of hot.
Dudes. Cooking is hard.
I decided to add some “nutrition” to our meal by heating up a can of green beans and then we sat down on the couch to watch TV and eat our all-American meal by the light of the Penguins game.
Looking at the bright orange Three Cheese Chicken and the dull green beans, I felt pretty bad I wasn’t feeding them all things fresh, organic, and nutritious. But the baby dug in and turned to me and said, “You cook things the best, Mum.”
And that right there made me feel like Anthony fucking Bourdain. Sure, the food is shitty, but I cook it with love. And that’s what matters.
Plus, we don’t starve to death. Always a good result.
Later, after I started to drool in bed, the husband came in and whipped the covers off of me to “fix” them, since he insists that I don’t do it right. I groaned at the shock of the cold, but in my sleepy state, I felt him lay the covers back down on top of me and then brush the hair out of my face.
I think those guys might keep me around, even if I’m not going to win any Woman/Mom/Wife of the Year awards.
This shit is just the greatest thing I’ve read today.
Angela and I were all atwitter over this story. Want to know what’s so great about it? Several things (loosely transcribed from my chat with Angela):
me: on the one hand, fuck her. but on the other, no one would have TOUCHED that book if it was written by a black woman who had actually experienced that shit
Angela: I am utterly giddy over what this exposes about publishing and journalism.
This is awesome.
me: oh my god, this so ties in with the wire this season! and how good people lie and do wrong things in order to get the good things done…though i think she was more of a fame-seeking turd
but still
Angela: Oh, this story gets better and better. Fucking Inga Muscio referred this asshole to the editor in the first place!
Angela: “Ms. Seltzer added that she wrote the book “sitting at the Starbucks” in South-Central”
Kelly. This story is making my day.
me: THE SOUTH CENTRAL STARBUCKS OMFG
me: “Ms. Seltzer added that she wrote the book “sitting at the Starbucks” in South-Central, where “I would talk to kids who were Black Panthers and kids who were gang members and kids who were not.””
so the black panthers and the bloods and the crips all gather at starbucks.
compelling stuff
Angela: We should totally visit there and write a book.
me: oh my god, seriously
“g-money and i bonded over lattes. but i was intrigued by his choice of soy milk”
“and i thought, ‘someone should give these people a voice.'”
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.
Yeah, so, last night’s post came after I had spent about 3.5 hours working on this webpage in Dreamweaver. When I first started this class, I was really digging learning some real HTML and thought to myself, “I could do this for a living and be some kind of writer/designer hybrid!”
Seven weeks later, everything has picked up speed considerably and I am seriously dog-paddling just to keep up. And now I’m a little despondent about my career options. Like, seriously, what CAN I do? Granted, this isn’t a class dedicated to web design and I’m sure if I really wanted to learn it I could find some better training.
And that actually gave me some comfort. See, during our lectures for this course, we learn about research methods and in the lab we learn HTML because the course is one big project: redesigning a website for a client. But since we don’t go over HTML in the lectures, it’s really like two separate classes (at least for now). So in reality I’m taking three classes this semester. Plus working full-time, plus freelance writing on the side, plus having a family.
It’s a bit much. And I don’t think it’s surprising that I’m overwhelmed and having a hard time.
And I don’t think the goal of the course is to become a web design expert in 12 weeks. At least I hope not. I just hope that my final redesign suggestions aren’t like, “How about a white background with some black 12 pt Times New Roman text and a vertical unordered list of links? No pics. It’ll be so minimal and such a throwback, everyone will be stunned by it’s brilliance!”
What? I can bullshit. Did I mention that the other class that I’m taking this semester is in marketing and PR? Next week we’re learning how to sell ribs to ladies in white gloves. Honest!
Of course, I toy with the idea of dropping a class, but at this point I’ve already done half of the work and I would need to take either class over again at some point. So I’m miserably resigned to sticking with both (or all three, however you look at it) and am just praying that I can still pull off some decent grades.
Luckily, my standards for decent grades are relatively low. I’m perfectly happy with Bs, though I will admit to becoming somewhat A-obsessed since being at this school, which is just chock full of people who just freak the fuck out at an A minus. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone with that mindset can enjoy life, but whatever.
What are you doing this weekend? Wanna hang aht?
I hate when schoolwork makes me cry and feel like the stupidest person on the face of the planet. I hate not understanding shit that I know comes very easily to a lot of people.
