Home Sweet Rental

For a whole three days, guy and i thought we were in the market to buy a house here in fairfax. i searched and searched and found two good options. good = in the hills in fairfax, wood floors, character and at least 2 bathrooms.

we went and we saw. we met a realtor dude. so strange to do this after the million and a half "House Hunter" shows i've watched, imagining it to be me.

i took it very seriously. i think we both did. while i looked at intrinsic style and space, guy looked at foundations and wobbly 50' decks. we were both nervous. i walked away from conversation while guy made weird clucking noises with his mouth. he even whistled once.

the second house was pretty great. not perfect, not dreamy and awesome, but pretty great. with a pretty small price. but still too much, as we learned this morning.

looks like we'll be putting house-buying off a while. the feeling is two equal parts disappointment and relief.

with a dash of vodka.

Reason One for a Sucky Day

The spread from hell. and i had to do it twice.

you should see the other guy.

ROAR, TIGER ROAR!!!

friend MB brought this to my attention the other day. what a shock.

it's a little documentary/film clip of my extraordinary high school english teacher and his annual performance of "Tiger Day." i remember this being the fight song for Princeton, his alma mater. Mr. A. is on my short list of great teachers. There are four on this list that spanned 15 years of school.

(like:
H.Christianson, 5th grade
L.Young, biology/philosophy 12th grade
J.Farrell, comparative lit/improv acting, 3rd year college)

cheers to ainslie. who gets an english teacher who's been a spy and a jazz musician as well? very lucky. ainslie had his own teacher's lounge in the basement of the old part of the school. the part that was not earthquake safe and should not have been inhabited. my friends and i would sometimes join him for cigarette-smoking. naturally the other teachers were not big fans of the chain-smoking alcoholic kerouac-loving, marilyn-worshipping multi-instrumentalist who was our teacher.

much appreciation to the kid four years my junior who filmed ainslie doing his thing.

ps. one of my closest friends at the time (1987) took a picture of ainslie unzipping his fly to show us his tiger shorts as well. believe me, there was nothing creepy about it. only funny. i'm sure that part of the performance did not last, however.

Another kind of Singularity

maybe the actualization of the final phase of the Singularity will surprise us.

in a way it makes much more sense. our bodies are the greatest computers that will ever live. it's a case of Occum's Razor, is it not?

In the dawn of the Alternative Bin...

It has often been said: “If you give them enough rope, they’ll hang themselves.” But why should they? Maybe they’ll create an unbelievably elegant arrangement of rope; an impossibly monumental construction of coiled vision which could only be classified as rope sculpture, stretching a timeless strand of understanding between us and posterity.

-Crosley Bendix, from the liner notes to Negativland's Escape From Noise.

it was august 1988. i wasn't even 18 yet. i still had thick cheeks and cystic acne. my mom and i stood in line at san diego state's Zura Hall, my new home for the next year. it was registration day and we were waiting my room assignment. behind us stood a tall man and his tall son. we greeted them and exchanged the usual, "So, where are you from?" turns out the tall man and his tall son were from Novato, about 45 minutes from our hometown, the interesting part being that i had gone to school with the tall kid's cousin most of my life.

he was blonde and immediately crushworthy and we became friends.

D. was into music. this was our main topic of conversation. he knew all about the "alternative" bin in the record stores. the alternative bin was small and seemed elite, like something i wouldn't understand. i never even looked through it. this was before indie rock hit the airwaves. it was still the Madonna Years. needless to say, D's alternative bin knowledge impressed me.

he gave me two records that year that totally opened my eyes. i was handed a brave new world of unclassafiable music and it saved me. it flung me out of the nowhere land of classic rock and into something new, something of my people and generation.

Record #1. escape from noise by negativland. car bomb sent us both into spasmatic giggles. yellow, black and rectangular carved ruts in my brain forever. in a good way. maybe it was the crush on D. that got me interested in such weird music, but ultimately my brain was ready for expansion. and negativland satisfied.

Record #2. Bo-Day-Shus! by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper. never ever heard of these guys before, but it seemed like i should have the music was so easy to love. their silly, fun melodies with smart aleck lyrics made me happy. i think i fell in love with D. after hearing bo-day-shus ("the art fag shufflllle! it don't take too much mu-u-u-scle!") nothing ever happened though.


*in a strange turn of events that i never would have even noticed without having met D., a couple years later i got flirted with by skid roper while working concessions during a concert. also impressive.

A friendly love letter to a house on cortland and it's beguiling owners

dear E/G and E/A,
i was thinking today about how i really miss the fun times we all used to have in the city. so many of them took place at your house on cortland.

you had such a cool place with the Lipton sign still on the windows, the high ceilings and kitchen in a surprising place. i loved the platforms up high that you put large art on. i loved that lama lived there. lama. good girl! i never imagined animals could have existential crises until i met lama and you explained what it meant when she just sort of whined with big, sad eyes. her chewbacca sound before it went bad.

it was fun just hanging out while you guys finished AMFTAO in the basement, drinking wine and listening to the tweaks and twoks, loud through headphones or dulled without.

i miss smoking cigarettes out on the corner, or right outside the basement side-doors if i was down there. you had many mysterious objects in your basement. i have no idea what most of them are to this day. they were a pleasing background to a warm and comfortable place. i remember that one time i left my ipod hooked up upstairs while i was down there and it was playing some crazy loud music. when i returned,
to my horror the song that had come on was "You Fucked Up!" by ween and gene ween was screaming YOU FUCKED UP! YOU REALLY FUCKED UP!!! AHHHHHHHHHH! and it kind of hurt and i was worried about hurting p. who was in the kitchen cooking, so i turned it off and he said, Oh, I was enjoying that! god, i barely knew you guys then.

your house is also where p. asked me if he could kiss me one night after a lot of drinking. Guy was already passed out when he asked with a tuck-of-the-head and uptilted eyes from the other side of the kitchen counter. i told him i couldn't kiss him but that didn't mean he wasn't super cute. he looked sad and i told him to smoke pot with me on the sofa and then it was fine.

your house was the first place guy, myself and j. all spent the night under one roof together. it was kind of funny waking up to art department in the morning, already congregated in one place. it changed our friendship forever. it pushed it to another level and is something i greatly value to this day.

i remember wrestling with N. on your couch. round and round we went. D. took a cool picture of it, it looks like clothes in a dryer, colors spinning. we bonded that day. i don't remember what the gathering was for, what celebration was to be had. maybe nothing. that happened alot.

i really miss getting spontaneous phone calls on the way home from work from guy, "wanna hang out at g&a's tonight? we're not really gonna be doing anything." my answer was always yes. and then suddenly i would be in another place i could call home.

lama. good girl lama. ruff!

love,
LJ

Nerding Out

my new favorite activity comes with a new favorite blog.

Wright dead

as my grandaddy used to say: DURN.
(tone is beyond upset and onto downtrodden. an expression of surrender with disappointment).

the new york times google listing has him going out at 165. lived a good long life. what on earth did he do before pink floyd?

DURN.

A special message for me on my way to work last Thursday.

Radioboard

so outside lands festival held in golden gate park a few weeks ago was overall...annoying. far far far away bathrooms, main acts on two separate stages with too little time in between them to get from one to the other. oh, and this fact, was never mentioned in any ads, so when 100,000 people spent $85 a night, they thought they were seeing everyone on the list. why wouldn't they. i mean i. why wouldn't i. well, i didn't. i paid $85 for beck AND radiohead. blah blah blah...

SO ASIDE from that...and i mean really aside...radiohead was GLORIOUS. there is no other word (even though i will try to find one). the sound was unbelievable (besides the fact that power was lost briefly twice)...every little tiny computer tweak and guitar kiss was heard. and it was beautiful.

thanks to friend, PB i can direct you to soundboard recording of that GLORIOUS performance.

oh
my
god.

i want more. don't you?

Super Cool Infinity

a magical city thing happened last night.

i come home and put my bag down. i walk to the sliding glass door to look for clementine. she's not there. i hear my neighbor yell hey!! at guy, who has just arrived. she asks guy is lou home? guy says yeah! then guy comes in the front door. he says, M. wants to take you to see robin williams in the city. right now. right now? yeah, right now! she has a ticket! you should go! ok! i'm gonna go, i tell him. i'm gonna go right now! and i run down the stairs, purse back on arm, sweater back in hand and jump into M's cute little mini. and we're off.

i feel like i'm back in the city!! i tell her. she nods, YEAH!! these days are about having fun and doing what comes along! i tell her i believe in that! but it never happens since leaving the city!

we talk all the way to bimbos passing a fatty back and forth. the car is like a rocket. tight. everything precise. a little bit of a rough ride, being so low, but ultimately super cool. super cool infinity. it is my first time inside the mini rocket. i stare at all the components. toggle switches, round read-outs, a built-in GPS, everything symmetrical, blue and black leather, shiny sparkly gray dash. she tells me about her husband and how he was so excited to get one, he didn't negotiate with the dealer and he didn't even get the color he wanted, he just bought what was there. that's how i operate i thought. So Stupid, she says. deep inside my head i agree. even deeper inside i cry. just kidding.

we get to the club and i find they don't take credit cards. M. has called ahead and her friends have gathered chairs for us at their table which is really close to the stage. we get there and she orders a bottle of domaine chandon and food for us. i get embarrassed with every purchase that i can't pay for, yet feel unable to turn anything down with grace. i'm a glutton.

it's a night in the city, out at a club, on an expensive free ticket, with a new friend seeing an old comic who i've loved for maybe my whole life. how am i supposed to say no to anything?

oh, and very funny robin. very funny. you made my face hurt.

Anniversary

happy fingers to guy.
it's our fingers anniversary.

no you should not know what that means.
only guy.

electric fingers.

Are we there yet?

we might be soon*!!! today is the first day the particles start their business. let's see what happens next...pineapple upside down surprise cake? maybe! although stephen hawking is betting on nothing.

for those of us old enough to remember. the discovery of black holes was a huge deal, very scary with a movie too.

UPDATE: and we have success (so far).



*thanks to j.e. for sending this to me

Large Hadron Collider Rap

the time is upon us.



in two days it could all be over. if only.

Injury Log #7

Yay, injury log #7. Due in August, this will have to "due."

like morning due. hot and burn-y, rumble-y, then DSA-y all over the porcelain.

Lots of vibrations in august. for several days i kept feeling a vibration in my left upper thigh so strong, i felt for sure my phone was going off in my purse, which would happen to hit right in the spot on my thigh that vibrated. even when the phone was in my hand, i was sure, the phone was going off inside my purse against my leg. you may remember other vibratory experiences i've had. there was the uterus vibration that was in constant motion in the weeks leading up to the endometriosis surgery. flutter flutter, like a spazzing eye muscle. so annoying. then gone right after surgery. just gone. the vibration in the bottom of my foot wasn't so good either. all in all, the vibration problem has been a sad lonely trip until two weeks ago!

i moved desks at work to get away from the slow-cruncher, constant talker. i had no idea that i where i moved to would be so entertaining. right next to a conference room, i get to hear all the big movements by all the big dicks every friday. this seat is alos next to a funny guy who, as it so happens, also gets vibration problems. in fact he told me about his vibrating leg, on almost the exact same day as mine, before i told him!

fearing loneliness more than anything, my vibration-common friend has really made me feel a lot better about it.

bruises are really too common for the injury log, but here they are for august: finger-tipped shaped bruises along back of both thighs like someone had pushed me super hard with only their finger tips. hmmm. who knows. very dark purple bruise on my right hand right in the middle on top of the skinny bones. hmmm. who knows. upper back left thigh/lower buttock - long purple and yellow bruise. most likely a drunken fall. isn't that attractive. after the finger-tip bruises healed, they were replaced with long horizontal bruises the exact width of my thighs in the same place. i don't know, did i jump up backwards to sit on top of a cement block? who knows.

since july (injury log #6) was so freaking mentally painful, my doctor put me on a half milligram of klonopin a day. this has significantly eased the onslaught of emotion and the transitions between them, keeping me from yelling at guy and being annoyed at every single little thing in the known universe all the time. yay! sometimes paying big bucks for a psychiatrist outside of the "network" is really worth the cash. not sometimes, all the time.

three cheers for doctor ravi rockstar. and for finding a vibration friend.

(also got clean bill of health from my gyno one year after surgery. super yay.)

Injury Log #6

Injury log #6 was deleted. after writing it and posting it and letting it live online for a day or so, i took it down. it's possible some experiences have zero merit no matter how, in this case, sad or dramatic they are.

"oh, maybe someone will gain something from me describing the excruciating mental pain of ... and my reaction ... and downfall ... and rise back up." no, sometimes it's just masturbation and it's not fair to put upon other people. see nirvana live at the coliseum new year's eve 1993. kurt threw up a gut all over us and it didn't feel good or insightful. it just felt nauseating.

therefore, Injury Log #6 shall remain in the archives. it's not like i threw it away or anything.