same notes

For some reason, I subscribe to Daily Candy Dallas, whch offers the specious promise of Carrie Bradshaw consumerism/quips for the Dallas set. I know there must be a prevailing culture of Dallas ladies with delusions, expensive jeans, and social lives, but I can only think of the trashy girls I went to school with, who all have babies now, and the bourgie ones, who live in Brooklyn.

Seattle was the same, familiarly alienating, half feeling relieved to not be in Houston, half feeling like a throwaway teenager. The house where I stayed was classic NW college style, with a perpetually dirty french press, futons, multiple copies of The Ethical Slut. The academic stuff went suprisingly well, aside from hobbling around in unfortunate croc ferragamo pumps and walking around in circles. Corny pickups were attempted at college bars, and the birth of the best stranger-chat line, “What’s your favorite lesbian occupation?” (correct answers include: Karate teacher, Cowgirl, Coast Guard Operator)

We saw The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches on at the Grand Illusion, everyone else in the theater was solo and middle-aged, true to NW winter movie watching suit. Dude in the movie, accompanied by his loyal and accepting wife, is engaged in a self perpetuating streak of trying to shame everyone else for their gruesome acts in WWII. It showcased Japanese old-person accommodation, because even as he goes around accusing others and assaulting them, he’s greeted with apologies for poor in-home welcomes. The next day I got to hear the news about people I used to know- who’s ruining their lives now, who is in jail for ecoterrorism, who’s settling normal. I’m scared of regression as well as being in the midst of people I used to be like and having no frame of reference.

In a bit of unbeforeseen NW tourism, we rode the ferry to Bainbridge Island (the toll operator thought I was 12) and hit up the Bloedel Reserve, half ungodly beautiful greenery, half western new-money self-perpetuation. I kept telling N to stop “harshing my mellow”.

 

Although I care deeply about information issues and librarianship, it’s probably a direct route to scandal and/or a total snooze fest if I keep writing about them alongside topics of bingo, my teen friends on myspace, love of stray dogs, et al.  So please redirect your attention, library/archives/info friends, to booktruck.org, a blog on the information professions that will hopefully be entertaining.

“who made the pizza?”

 

If you find this blog in a google search for “Tristan Wilds Myspace” (that’s Michael from the Wire, fogies),  please  accept my direction to this Wire myspace clearinghouse. Here you will find not only Tristan’s profile, but Felicia Pearson (Snoop)‘ s profile, Nathan Corbett (Donut)’s profile (he’s set to private, but he added me as a friend!), et al. My favorite, (the ruling facors being “personality”, “content”, and “realness”)  is  Tyrell Baker (Little Kevin). He kinda cheats with this picture of him (“Pimpin’ Pink” isn’t even something I can say out loud in mixed company) and his Granny.

I know you see it

My former classmate Norah Jones was on 60 Minutes last week, and Katie Couric asked her, “Do you identify as Indian?” NJ was like, “Urr, I grew up in Dallas…”

One of the reasons why punk has always been so defeatingly other to me is that it is so much easier, as a girl, as someone from  a part of America with such an undefined narrative,  to read my life into celebrity culture. As I was heading out of adolescence, all these girls, who were my age, who were from surburban Dallas or Houston or Louisiana, were becoming celebrities- I knew where they were from, I knew people who went to school with them, they were like the girls I went to school with.

Even with irregular TV watching and a fair amount of indifference,  I’ve watched these girls grow up, get married, screw up, and forge,  these adult lives that are from the outside, not completely different than those that girls I know are living. Watching them is like watching Freeway 2- this crazy world sucks.

If you were a kid in the 80s, and the grownups you knew had messy lives, expressions like “one day at a time”, and “keep it simple, stupid” leaked into your lexicon, clueing your piano teachers and friends’ parents as to how screwed up your family life was. But as a result, AA/NA rhetoric is really comforting to hear sometimes.

We are doing EVERYTHING in our power to get help for Britney and all in our power to NOT pad the bottom or move the bottom, so when she does indeed hit rock bottom, she’ll stand up and walk away from this whole fiasco a new, confident, changed, career driven Britney like we all knew and loved.

There’s just so much you can do to help a person—I don’t dare want to be an enabler, and I cannot love her enough for the both of us. I cannot convince her in ANY way to love herself. All I can do is be a friend, someone that loved her for MANY years unconditionally, and PRAY. That, I have decided is the most and best I can do for my friend. I cannot save her from herself, nor can I commit her to any type of treatment program against her wishes and will. I am throwing my hands up and realizing that I am helpless over another—ANYONE!

Speaking of Freeway 2, I had a dream last night that I was hanging out with Natasha Lyonne, who had just gotten out of rehab and was bitching about being in with Laura Linney, thus making a couple of funny tales of the city jokes.

See ya on the other side!

tread on in heaven

 

Please read this obit for Florence Zacks Melton, inventor of modern slippers. I was genuinely moved by the story of a teen bride turned postwar manufacturing magnate and innovator of adult religious education,  and felt extremely comforted thinking about slippers at end.

sex in space

For some reason I hadn’t seen Ordinary People all the way through until a few weeks ago, when it was scheduled on HBO during the insomnia/”me time” hours of 4-6 AM Tuesday morning. In it, there’s a scene where the parents get sick of their crazy teenager and go to Houston. It’s all golf, people getting rich, newly acquired Texas accents, and mild weather.

Another night, at approximately the same time, they were showing A Little Romance, which was another movie that I couldn’t not love, with a tiny Diane Lane and an alpine bike chase. Who is this angel who’s programming the graveyard shift on HBO, bringing the unique comforts of not-dumb early 1980s comedy-dramas to frazzled modern ladies (who somehow have gauche extended cable packages) in the wee hours of weekday mornings? ALR also leads to Houston, as shrewd businessman Dad is packing lil’ Diane, and her drag-queenish Mom off to Houston. Mom is like “But Houston, Houston so… Houston!”

“Oh shit”, I thought. This is the importance of Houston in the 1980s, in modern culture, to white people and the global economy. It’s where asshole stepdads and uncles went to get rich. Jokes exist for a reason, and in the 2000s those asshole uncles are running the world, running the war, getting off the hook for Enron, getting even richer off oil and and Haliburton.

Of course the essential Houston-in-the-80’s movie is Terms of Endearment, and I will admit to taking walks around the Rice campus while dressed in wranglers and a crocheted cape and pretending I’m in that movie. But TOE, separate from the canonical Maclaine/ Winger performance, is actually the tip of the iceberg for Larry McMurtry. Larry is really into the myth of the white Texan, and in fact has pretty much carried this this myth for about 30 years: Lonesome Dove, Last Picture Show, et al. One consistent part of this is these intensely sexual yet slightly dumb women.

There’s that Jack Nicholson character in Terms, a fun pussyhound ex-astronaut who lives in a tasteful home in a tasteful neighborhood. Sorry, no. Maybe such a person did exist, but they definitely broke the mold afterwards. Slate ran this story about sex in space. Yeah, right. If you have to be around middle class white people in Houston at all, you’ll pick up real quick on the commercial culture of space, oil, and war. They live in the southeastern suburbs, who elected Tom Delay for a million consecutive terms. They are tacky and bland and ridiculously comfortable. Most importantly, they are REPRESSED.

If you watch the news for stories of female deviants, you can figure out what that all leads to: not an overactive sex drive and a lack of any real intellectual curiousity, but all-out Yellow Wallpaper style hysteria, acted out on a appropriately violent and insane modern scale.

stick it in

I am mildly obsessed with this woman, Penelope Trunk, and her blog, The Brazen Careerist. The thing is written like Parade, is full of useless statistics, and uses this strategic yet slightly castigating rhetoric. I hate to admit it, but she has credible advice about getting things done and dealing with a shitty boss. But she’s inanely prescriptive in her advice to women, and as she’s writing from the perspective of someone who made money in the 90’s, she doesn’t acknowledge that jobs are worse now than they’ve ever been, and that the flexibility she preaches isn’t an option for most people.

There’s a post today about how ladies should just laugh it off and “feel powerful” when dudes you work with try to fuck you while you’re on a trip together. Ha ha ha, Penelope, I’ll totally remember to feel powerful the next time someone who potentially holds a lot of power over me, and as man, generally has more credibility than me, crosses all lines of decency and respectful behavior, and makes a completely degrading gesture! She’s even so wise as to say, “if you don’t sleep with random guys in real life, it’s unappealing to do it on a business trip.” Actually, if you DO sleep with random guys in real life, you’ll have no need and even less desire to do so with the boring losers you work with. Business travel is so incredibly sleazy. If you have to go somewhere with a dude you work with, if you have to go to a conference, just assume that every dude you have to interact with is scamming. As my friend Joseph says, “men with hotel rooms are bad news”.

As someone who is generally hateful, grumpy, and full of scorn, especially towards men, I feel I deflect a lot of unwanted attention, but am astonished at the capacity of men to ogle, say inappropriate things, and harass me, even in settings where it’s totally ridiculous to do so. It’s nice women who have to deal with the worst shit, and who are also, not coincidentally, always dating assholes.

D IN THA BIG T

Two choice bits, mainly for my sister, who gets her hometown news solely from this blog. First, cocaineblunts has posted the awesome 1987 Something Fresh anthem, “Oak Cliff”, props to Kiest park, Redbird mall, and practically every high school in Dallas, including Skyline. Their main argument: “You will never find another place like this”. Agreed.

A little old but nonetheless, Big Tuck w/ Tum Tum, “Welcome to Dallas”. A large part of this is shot in Pleasant Grove, including a barbecue scene that looks like it was shot in our abuela’s front yard.

RIP

Dude, let’s hope that the old adage is true, and that ANS’ artistic genius can be better appreciated in her death than in her life. You were too much for this world!

sweatpants and dip

As much as I believe in the unifying nature of sports, and like chips, Rotel dip, pizza, and wings, and love to hiss at people who turn their noses up at things way bigger than them, there is something to be said about spending Super Bowl Sunday in a dignified, quiet, unconsumed way, away from commercials, feigned boisterousness and manliness in general. Four years ago, I remember hanging around the pizzeria in Olympia to watch some part of the superbowl. The next year I was in Austin, working at the library that night, and was eating some sort of salad bar selection in a UT dorm cafeteria, watching the Janet Jackson/JT halftime show and remember being sort of nonplussed, then hearing the news of the flashing/whatever later. I totally skipped it the next year, but last I made chili and made a big deal of watching it with my boyfriend.

Since I was sans-boyfriend, I spent all day Sunday in Austin with Joseph, cooking beans, buying moldy wicker and stewing quail, and listening to some informative podcasts. It was nothing, it felt great. Why don’t college women’s groups do something to eradicate and avoid the Domestic Violence peak of the year? Why don’t single ladies and liberated ladies make a big deal of doing something else?

When you see friends you haven’t seen in a while, it is disorienting to think about how you’re dressing now as opposed to how you dressed when you were hanging out all the time. Since I moved to Houston, I’ve gone from being around a fair amount of girls whose styles I admired, and with whom I talked about clothes all the time, to not being around much of anyone with whom I have that constant dialogue with about clothes. It’s a little liberating in a way, but like most things that happen when you’re floundering a little, it’s scary too.