apparently, i can't let the jerry falwell thing go

mark morford, the sf chronicle's outrageously liberal columnist, has assembled a cornucopia of falwell quotes that serve as the perfect memorial for the recently-deceased demagogue.

enjoy!

btw, here are my two faves:

"You know when I see somebody burning the flag, I'm a Baptist preacher I'm not a Mennonite, I feel it's my obligation to whip him. In the name of the Lord, of course. I feel it's my obligation to whip him, and if I can't do it then I look up some of my athletes to help me. But, as long as at 72 I can handle most of the jobs I do it myself, and I don't think it's un-spiritual. When I, when I, when I hear somebody talking about our military and ridiculing and saying terrible things about our President, I'm thinking you know just a little bit of that and I believe the Lord would forgive me if I popped him.

Also,

"God doesn't listen to Jews."

around the world in two songs

sorry to leave you with that hate-filled balloon face staring at you since my last post. i hope you find exceedingly french-looking men more palatable. yes, that's renowned pootie hound serge gainsbourg. dig the lame'!

in just 36 hours, we will begin our journey from los angeles to newark to london to paris to the swiss alps to venice to rome with stops in between. lordy, my wings are gonna be tired!

i will try to post from the proverbial road, but not sure how often i can get to it in between espressos, etc. don't hate!

i thought it would be fun to take you on a brief musical journey inspired by our actual journey, so grab your passport and enjoy!

UK - "The State I'm In" - Belle and Sebastian
France - "Je t'aime moi non plus" - Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin (is that intercourse i hear?)

i was going to do switzerland and italy, but something's up with my file sharing service, so i can only bring you along for half of our trip. apologies!

remembering jerry falwell

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped [9/11] happen.'"

don't hate me because my dogs are beautiful

i work hard for the money

well, the potential client i blogged about (the one i was hoop-jumping for) finally signed, along with another one on the heels, and still yet another who seems to begetting ready to sign. that will be three new clients starting at once. i am beginning to feel like i'm living in a 'cathy' cartoon. it's good news, but i'm starting to get a wee bit nervous about pulling it all off. good thing i'm leaving the country for two weeks this saturday! i'm already dreading the plane ride back to my new, work-laden life. good thing i have xanax!

so, since i'm so busy, some random thoughts:

* saw '28 weeks later.' i'm getting too old for horror movies, even 'smart' ones like this. my teeth hurt after from grinding. also, the older i get, the more easily i fall for the'lull-you-into-fake-tranquility-only-to-have-a-zombie-jump-out-and-chomp-
on-someone's-head' trick.

* meeting with the dog trainer tonight who will be living at our house while we're out of town and putting our dogs through 'boot camp.' i already feel badly about leaving them, and then to know that they will be forcibly trained while we're gone is almost more guilt than i can bear. that said, visitors to our house will be happy not to have their knees molested upon entry.

that's it for now. too tired and anxiety-ridden over today's workload to blog much more, but i'll be back and better than ever once i've moved some of this off of my plate. one bright spot: new wilco album out today!

seventies goodness

joan didion is my favorite writer, and i've always been curious as to how they adapted her 1972 (and best, i think) novel, 'play it as it lays' into a movie, but could never find out as the movie isn't available on video and i've never seen it listed as airing on tv, either.

as it turns out, the egyptian theatre on hollywood blvd. is running a 70's film festival all month, and we went with friends last night to see the movie there (after a delicious dinner at the pig 'n' whistle of -- wait for it -- nachos made out of wontons -- am i in heaven??).

wow! it was amazing. i forget how great american movies once were and how flippin' french-like! also, because l.a. and its desert surroundings are such a big part of the emotional landscape of the movie (and the novel), we ate it up. and the clothes! j'adore! also, i'm wondering if all the reports of smog's effect on the body are exaggerated, cause that '70s l.a. air was brown as gravy, yo, and my next door neighbors who have lived in the same house for 60 years, enveloped in said smog, are 93 and 96 and drag their trashcans up from the street (50 yards i'd say) their own damn selves!

aside from the aesthetics, the performances were fantastic, especially tuesday weld (talk about 'whatever happened to...') and anthony perkins. if you ever get a chance to see this one, do. it is well worth it (and the novel makes for a great summer read, particularly if read while doing something debauched, like smoking by a pool with no sunblock on).

i couldn't resist

i thought the president had a direct line to the man upstairs. think he could do a little something about this?

fire in the taco bell!

ok, so there wasn't a fire in the taco bell, a la the electric six song, but there was a fire in the nabe, as you know from my previous post. and it got pretty scary around here last night.

we had to go to the west side to grab some cheap european clothes for our trip and pondered whether it was safe to leave. after watching the news and hearing that they expected the fire to be contained shortly, we headed out.

cut to 8ish. the mister and i have just plopped down for some delicious deli food at canter's when we get a call from our friend and neighbor kenobi saying that things were outta control. this was one of those moments where you realize just how big l.a. is. as we grabbed our food to go and zoomed home as quickly as possible (our dogs!), it was surprising how many folks were just going about their evening in other parts of town we sped through. the bottom line in a big ol' metropolis like this is that something affecting one part of town has no bearing on another.

anyhoo, we made it over to los feliz, the neighborhood just next to ours, only to find crowds, no power, and citizen traffic cops who had no idea what they were doing. at that point, we started to get a little freaked. it was 100 degrees at 8:30 according to the car thermometer, and we started to wonder how long our dogs had been in the house with no a/c, if the power had gone out. about that time, the ashes started blowing around the car. yikes!

we got home and the a/c was on, but blowing low levels of smoke into the house. the dogs were ok, but you could tell they were a little skeeved from all the helicopter noise, etc.

it looked really bad from our backyard and like it was marching down the hill towards homes and possibly, eventually, to our house. the neighbors with all the kids and the pool below is were outside spraying down their yard and house and asking us where we were planning on evacuating to. the smoke was blowing directly into the canyonish area where we live and immediately gave me a headache. it felt like the end of the world as we know it, and i didn't feel fine (bah-dum-dum).

in the end, it all ended up ok. we're not out of the woods yet over here as they are expecting 100 degree high today and nearly zero percent humidity, but luckily it is completely still outside right now, which is keeping the fire in check.

it really is interesting when you have to make an on the spot inventory in your head and figure out what you should take if you have to leave. for us it was wallets, computers, hard drives and the dogs.

fire

i am so bummed. for the last hour, i've been watching a fire get larger and larger on the opposite hill from ours, which is the upper reaches of griffith park. watching the news now, and they have evacuated the zoo and apprehended the arsonist responsbile. 40 acres burned so far. i really hope that no one else gets hurt (one civilian already burned) and that all of the animals are safe. very sad.

the smoke is hovering above our house and the sun is shining through it, turning everything orange. of course, the live coverage on abc 7 has no been preempted - for oprah. welcome to america!

snow job

i'm sorry to go on a political rant once more, but this storycomes directly from the 'if i say it is so, then it will be so' book of white house stances (right alongside 'you done good, brownie' and 'i have more confidence now in gonzales than i did even before').

it's a fact: the iraq war has depleted the availability of national guard resources for any national-guarding that needs to happen. period. there are no gray areas here. it is a fact.

for the white house to assert that the governor of kansas is lying about the lack of national guard resources and that it is having an effect on how quickly that state can recover from this most recent (or any future) catastrophe is ridiculous. to further assert that this is all just an issue of her not following protocol is beyond absurd.

in earthquake-prone california, they long ago told us that we could expect to be without help in the event of a major earthquake for -- wait for it -- up to three weeks given the tapped resources of the national guard, the various governmental pocketbooks that have been drained by this unwinnable war, and the miserable track record this administration has when it comes to responding to domestic emergencies here in the homeland (katrina, anyone?).

grrrrrrr.

the summer of my discontent

it's 92 degrees here at lyrical robot central, and it ain't even june. i love summer, especially the long, warm (hot) nights spent being gently caressed by breezes while nursing a bottle of rose. however, there is a downside, and on that downside you will find the kids in the pool.

the kids in the pool come to us courtesy of the neighbors who seem not to believe in birth control. our house sits on a hill and directly below us (like 15 feet as the crow flies) is our neighbors' pool. because the neighbors' children are so ill-behaved, they like to turn them loose in the pool the minute the weather gets warm. i don't like to judge others' parenting skills, but i'm going to anyway -- these kids get every thing they want, and their backyard is a graveyard of a thousand whims met and forgotten within minutes. pool toys, playground equipment, stuffed animals, you name it.

now that the weather is warm, i get to hear their incessant screams of joy and excitement (interrupted only by the sounds of the mother screaming from a safe distance for little johnny to put down the chainsaw or little lydia to take her foot out of her brother's ass) from now until at least september. color me thrilled.

(i should mention that the crescendo of screaming that prompted me to write this has abruptly ended, and now i'm feeling a little bit guilty about my angry reaction. however, i would put money on the chance that they will be back at it as soon as they're all done with their popsicles somewhere inside the house.)

the startling surprise of met expectations

we saw 'year of the dog' last night and it was amazing (if you don't believe me, read the ny times review). it's the first time in years that i remember walking out of a theater and having to think about how red-rimmed my eyes were from crying. it's not a tearjerker, per se, but there is something about the movie, its message and a seriously amazing performance by molly shannon that all just conspired to get the three of us who saw it a-weepin'. highly recommended, and one of the only times i can remember that a movie for which i had such high expectations actually met them.

woof

i love molly shannon, i love dogs, and i love mike white, so i am super stoked, yo, to see 'year of the dog' tonight. i am trying to keep the expectations down, but i CAN'T! i am worried about the fact that her dog, pencil, dies early on and how loud my sobs might be. let's hope they get quirky and comedic shortly on the heels of that, or i am likely to need sedation. speaking of, have you seen the humane society commercial with sarah maclachlan? if that shit comes on, RUN from your television. it will tear out your heart and throw it into the middle of a busy freeway on a friday afternoon.

my new non-PERC, eco-friendly dry cleaner is about 1/2 mile from amoeba music (which i swear was called 'amoeba records' when i first moved to sf in 93), so i helped myself to a few leonard cohen cds i hocked in college and haven't owned since. i can already tell you that while the dry cleaner is saving the earth, they are also going to be dooming my purse. i also helped myself to a new 80 gb ipod this week, because i might want to watch 'the office' while hurtling through the chunnel on my upcoming vacay, doncha know. and who doesn't want to ride through france with a little piaf or serge gainsbourg tickling your auditory nerves? plus, i'm worth it, dammit.

have a lovely weekend, and, in keeping with the dog theme, please enjoy one of my favorite cuts from the cardigans most recent album (import-only, in keeping with the european vacay theme):

i need some fine wine and you, you need to be nicer

pardon me, but are my ears steaming?

the white house is threatening to veto federal hate crime legislation that would add gender and sexual orientation to existing federal hate crime laws. their argument? including them "undermines freedom of speech, religious expression and equal protection under the law."

so, if your idea of religious expression is to bash a gay person's head in with a baseball bat, or your freedom of speech includes beating a woman because you believe she deserves it because she's a woman, conservatives are ready to take up your cause!

i literally had to read the article twice to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. don't you just love bush's self-proclaimed 'compassionate conservatism' and his ability to be a 'uniter and not a divider'? what an honorable set of principles you've got there, bush & co., trading people's lives and safety for votes from the falwells and the dobsons and the robertsons of this fair land.

(you have reached the end of this rant. please make sure you check for any personal items you may have left behind you during the ride.)

here comes the sun

i am slowly throwing off the oppressive work chains of the last few weeks and beginning to feel a little more normal, but not nearly normal enough that i don't have to get back on a plane tomorrow. blech. anyhow, here's a list:

*saw rufus wainwright, which was really great, though was too tired to get way into it. shirley manson of garbage was there, but i left before there was any duet action. also, tara subkoff, sometime actress and designer behind the imitation of christ label.

*came across this blog posting today featuring a fellow neighborhoodie going postal on the new bofa that just opened across from our old apartment on franklin. ick to the max!

*the big sales preso/paid project we just completed clocked in at about 100 hours of work, vs. the 25 i scoped it as. don't you love it when you can feel the money actually floating out of your wallet? now we wait to see if we are good enough. vodka, is that you?

*we're actually going to kick it in the city this weekend for a change. will be nice to take in the urban vibe. i am dying to see 'year of the dog,' so hopefully that will happen.

that's it---i need a nap. i'm audi 5000!

does the world need another lita ford?

yes. a thousand times, yes.