breakdown, go ahead and give it to me

reading of britney and lindsay's recent travails, i am reminded of a kinder, gentler time, when star meltdowns weren't quite so public and just seemed like an all-around more enjoyable experience.

so i went hunting for these elusive memories, and here's what i found:

it's good to be back home again

...so says john denver, but i'm not so sure.

what was supposed to be a leisurely long weekend with the family at the south carolina beach town where i spent summers turned into an exercise in pandemonium, not to mention overeating.

let me set the scene: we were scheduled to leave on a redeye leaving LAX at 12:30 a.m. on thursday. tuesday and wednesday found me in the bay area for work, so i landed at burbank at 8:30 wednesday night, ran home to pack and squeeze the dogs (and squeeze in a drink), then proceed to the parking spot on sepulveda (my favorite place to park at lax...it's like heaven).

cut to: the mister and i standing at the shuttle stand waiting to be whisked away to our nearby terminal. my blackberry twinges. what do i find but an email from my sister (at 2 am her time). the youngest nephew is sick and it doesn't look like we can go to the beach. with the mister short on vacay time, he decides to jump ship (or plane) and head back home. i proceed onto the airport, only to find that my itinerary is cancelled. even though i have a boarding pass, there is no seat for me...not on my flight out of lax, not on my flight out of dallas to s.c., and nothing on the return. so, i manage to get all of that worked out (at one in the morning with a combined weekly total of ten hours of sleep to that point) and board the plane. which is populated solely with screaming babies and two good old boys who decide it is high time to tuck into the airplane booze as they sit directly behind me from 1 am to 4 am (pacific) and hold a redneck kaffeklatsch in my ear.

i make it to dallas, get a new seat on my flight and head to s.c. it is still up in the air as to whether we will be going to the beach. i crash for several hours (after accompanying the moms to linen-n-things...pinch me!), and wake up in a somewhat better mood. we grab some takeout from one of my favorite local joints and then go visit my grandparents. about twenty minutes into that, my mother starts itching uncontrolloably.

cut to: me at the emergency room with my mom at 9:45. guess what time we get out of there? that's right---2:30 a.m.!!!

the merriment continued from there, but i won't bore you with the details, other than to say i was supposed to arrive home last night at 9:30, but in fact made it home today at noon today. for those keeping score at home, that means i had to awaken today at 1 a.m. pacific for my journey home...and i have a full day of work ahead of me!

i will say that i never made it to the beach, but did get to spend four days with my nephews in their town. they are adorable and (almost) made the trip worthwhile (ok, they did, but only because i got to use them as an excuse to play air hockey and skeeball).

so, the moral of the story is: make your family come to you. or pack a hell of a lot more xanax than i did.

the end.

working for the weekend

lordy. here it is monday morning and my dancing shoes is wore out, y'all.

as you know from the previous post, friday night was spent in beverly hills for a bday celebration at mr. chow and then the beverly hills hotel. luckily, saturday night was spent in more comfortable environs, like soul food restaurants and dive bars, as we belatedly celebrated the mister's bday.

contrary to popular belief, i'm scared of karaoke, but i love to go to it, so we finished off a lovely evening that began at the chalet in eagle rock, then proceeded to larkin's joint two blocks away (no liquor license, so be prepared) and ended up at the smog cutter, the crown jewel of virgil village (or so says the l.a. municipal neighborhood designation sign as you draw close to it). little did we know we had not one, not two, but three karoake stars in our midst: ginger, pablo & gina. spanning the likes of reo speedwagon, olivia newton-john and duran duran, our crowd brought the talent and the glamour to the evening.

after bed at 3:30 ayem (the latest i have been up in at least five years), we spent the day organizing the house yesterday and finished up with a performance of mary lynn rasjkub's (chloe on '24,' but better known to us from 'punchdrunk love') one-woman show, "the complications of purchasing a poodle pillow," which is running here in the nabe at the steve allen theater through august. it was easily one of the best things i've seen in years and, at only $25, it delivers major bang for your bucks. she was totally off-kilter and fantastic, though it was unnerving sitting very close to the stage in a not-nearly-packed theater and having to worry whether the attention would turn to you at any moment (as it did to the folks sitting just in front of us, repeatedly). though she singled me out eventually, it was in the last few minutes of the show and she didn't linger, so that was ok.

now it's back to ye olde grinde. thanks to everyone who helped make the weekend such a liver-enlarging success!

greetings from planet xenu

...or, 'we sight celebrities so you don't have to vol. 10.'

via a strange twist of fate, we found ourselves at the beverly hills hotel last night. i get increasingly nervous outside of our comfortable eastside environs and going to beverly hills literally feels like visiting a different country. the people look different, the architecture is different, the streets are different -- i may as well be in croatia.

so, imagine how disorienting it was to a) walk into the beverly hills hotel, period and b) to run smack dab into:



...well, minus the freakishly short husband with the massive chompers. yes, katie holmes, looking quite beautiful, normal-sized and happy, with her ohioan parents and the little one. i could have sworn i heard little suri cry out "let me go with the nice christian gays!" as we walked by, but i'm not sure.

"i need to get myself arrested in the phillipines"

if you have 10 minutes...

...this video of the huffington post's max blumenthal at a college republican convention is mind-blowing:

"i have asthma"

it must be christmas

i have been a wee bit m.i.a. the last few days, so let me share with you some goodies. here are three tracks that randomly popped up on my ipod recently, all of which i'd kind of forgotten about until i heard them again, and they're super good.


hotel ghost - john doe


tumbling down - alison moorer


everybody knows - ryan adams

my gifts to you

do you like dogs?

do you like dogs jumping through laser beams?

if yes to both, please enjoy:

it's raining drag queens

a friday list

* they should call spanikopita 'spanikopi - TA DA!!' given how surprising its reappearance is post-consumption

* mixing white and blush wines is not a good idea

* don't buy trader joe's strawberry frozen fruit bars. there is some serious chinese chemicals happening up in there.

* mark ronson's remix of amy wino's 'valerie' manages to mix mid-90s horn-happy house with paul welleresque jamminess to great effect

* happy weekend. the benihana bunny shrimp is on me tonight!

fleabag

so, jackson was licking his butt for the last 48 hours not because he could, but because he was eaten up with fleas. never knew fleas would be such a big deal, but after about two hours of internet research, it looks like we're in for daily (!) vacuuming and all kinds of other pleasantries for up to two months if we really want to ensure they are gone. if we wanted to 'bomb' the place with insecticides, we could be done with this in a week, apparently, but there are enough other toxins flowing through these veins without getting all love canal up in heah. the worst part: having to put jackson three rooms away for the night because i couldn't sleep with his licking and scratching and otherwise going nuts -- the first time he's had to sleep alone since we've had him, poor guy. not to mention that he is now off at the vets being dipped in chemicals (i made the mistake of reading about how they do this and am still trying to get it out of my head). loretta, on the other hand, is getting a thorough bathing by me later as she is too allergic to get the chemical treatment. here's hoping that works.

turns out the most environmentally and pet-safe way of getting rid of fleas in your house is spreading salt all over the floors and letting it sit for several days before vacuuming it up. i did this, even though it is at odds with my superstition about spilling salt, knock on wood.

in other, more depressing, news, i watched 'the bridge' last night, the documentary about people who kill themselves by jumping off of the golden gate. it was extremely depressing, but worth seeing, if you can get comfortable with watching eight or nine people jump off of the bridge on camera.

in happier news: since i couldn't sleep, i decided to watch several episodes of 'this american life' on showtime on demand and was very pleasantly surprised. maybe 'the bridge' had my tear ducts primed, but i shed a few at least once during each of the three episodes i watched. i think i remember hearing that critical reaction to the show has been mixed, but i thought it was incredible. and i would be curious to see what my friend the ethicurean thinks/thought of their trip to a factory pig farm (which unsurprisingly results in the show's sound man becoming a vegetarian during the filming).

outbreak

i have a client that is involved in web video, so it is with great interest that i find myself in the middle of a viral video explosion!

i caught the video below on perez hilton a few days ago and loved it. then, my friend kenobi IM'd it to me. turns out, a friend of hers created it. now this morning, i got an email from another friend who included the video. when i viewed it on monday, it had 336 views. now, it is at 600,000 views, in just two days. the interweb is strange and wonderful, indeed.

so, in case you haven't seen it, please enjoy:

step off, sanjay

ok, i'll admit it. i find michael moore a little overbearing. that said, i think he's pretty darn amazing and i very much believe he knows his stuff and sticks to facts, though they are presented in a propagandistic way more often than not. (btw, if you want to raise your blood pressure to stratospheric levels, re-watch 'fahrenheit 9/11' now and see how frighteningly dead-on that entire movie was).

anyhoo, moore had a huge blow-up on cnn last night when wolf blitzer had him on. prior to his live interview, they aired a sanjya gupta piece that claimed to debunk many of the assertions in 'sicko.' for a full ten minutes, moore gets medieval on blitzer's ass and promises to respond to gupta's claims, which he did last night at 12:19 (see below).

what makes me so angry about all of this is that sanjay gupta knows better, but the media can't help themselves when it comes to packaging a story in a more provocative fashion a la mr. moore himself, though often at the expense of facts. and cnn in particular gets my goat, because, in their ratings battle with fox news, they routinely go to great lengths to avoid appearing soft on left-leaning folk like michael moore.

michael moore - sanjy gupta smackdown

scenes from our scottsdale weekend

forgot to mention that things got a bit dramatic during the celebration!

it's not the heat...it's the humidity

the mister's bday weekend involved a jaunt to scottsdale, arizona, and what a (furnace) blast it was!

on the recommendation of the nagwells, we stayed at the hotel valley ho, which i highly recommend, though the saturday afternoon pool scene there was like watching a human-sized petri dish -- lots of fake everything and meaningful splashing going on. but, they had wonderful food at incredibly cheap prices for a hotel, which i love. plus, they have a trader vic's, and i never miss a chance to down a few london sours.

school you

Rabbits Learn About 50 Cent - Funny videos are here

tit for tat

you know i like to give you something completely vapid to offset any political rantings, 'cause i don't want you to think i am actually a person of substance. therefore, i give you this (consider it an early halloween treat):



in other news, i highly recommend 'sicko.' for all of michael moore's media-asserted failings (he's rich! he's fat! he's rich and fat!), the film is a real eye-opener. also, it gives me about a hundred new reasons to move to france (enjoy me while you can, folks; i am outta here sometime in the next 10 years).

now, on a patriotic note: my little corner of the u-s-of-a is very precious to me, so please enjoy a little-seen glimpse into one of its many surprises:

nature trumps

i'm the decider: part 72,389

from bush's statement regarding today's pardon of scooter libby:

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby’s case is an appropriate exercise of this power.

unbelievable.