key store that looks like a key

I am in Dallas; I have been here less than 24 hours and already talked to extended family members on the phone about thunderstorms and likely power outages, watched Cheaters and Blind Date (a program which I realize now contains no cues as to the cultural time and temperature- it could be 1996 or 2001 or last week, Roger Lodge looks the same, hot tubs look the same, no diff. ) and made snacks.

But my favorite thing about visiting my parents is catching up on St. Anthony Messenger, Texas Catholic, and the White Rocker (actual East Dallas newspaper- they do not have a web site). SAM and TC both feature CATHOLIC MOVIE REVIEWS, which are a specific genre of film review in which you learn if the movie is entertaining, if it’s socially responsible or immoral, and if the heathenism in it is so bad that you shouldn’t see it. They also itemize the offenses, so you get a terse little roundup. So here:

VENUS (O, R): Peter O’Toole was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of an aging actor and a dirty old man with unrequited lust for the great-niece of a friend. Uneven and sometimes disgusting tale with moments of brilliance; crude, problem sexuality and language.

That one was written by an actual nun.

Texas Catholic has an archive of them.

“i like sheets that tell a story”

The guy they brought into do the library web site focus groups was this bearded middle-ager with an east Texas accent, a guatemalan shirt and Clarks, who spoke in this stoned dad/child therapist voice and made these real sly affirmative remarks, “that’s a very good point”, “well, you know, social animals all laugh”. I play this scene in my head where the two of us  like, go to Cici’s Pizza, and he’s like “Hmm, this 3.99 buffet is both tasty and a real value”. And of course, there was this article in the NYT Home section , which Brittany pointed out how awesome this dude Albert Podell’s apartment sounds. I forget how much I actually like dudes sometimes!

The real fallacy of the apartment article wasn’t just that they missed the fact that Albert Podell is living the dream, but that they mention a hetero dude  who fell in love with a girl because of her le creuset and antiques. YEAH RIGHT! I spend several hours a week looking at vintage enameled cast iron pieces on Ebay, and so I can say with authority that no dude is gonna love you for your $200 dutch oven. No dude is gonna love you (and by this, I mean, like Akon, “I wanna love you”) for your Kitchen Aid Mixer, either. (They will just get real pissy when you make them help you move, because that shit is heavy. And you in turn will get upset when they use your cookware to make mac n’ cheese and then use a too-abrasive scrubber to clean it.) Watching the food network and spending yourself into a hole buying fancy hausfrau shit (although enjoyable for its indulgence and the simple beauty of well-crafted objects) is behavior so repellent it makes being a cat lady look charming. If you do find yourself with a man who coos over your bourgeois domestic overspending, prepare for a life of no sex.

I mean, I think a lot about gender and how people adapt it to play their societal roles. But what does it mean when I sincerely wish to become a male senior citizen several times a day?

drawn in/ “gay fat”

LADIES! has this ever happened to you?

I was watching Frontline and minding my own business, when I looked down at my shoulder and noticed an extremely long hair growing out of it- like two inches long! It’s like when, as a kid noticed a freakishly long hair growing out of my Dad’s ear whilst sitting in Mass, assumed it was an errant head-hair and then attempted pull it out, thus embarassing us both. Is this what happens when you get old?

Also, how great is that show Workout? I like Jackie partly because she reminds me of Susan Powter, for whom I have residual affection, because among other things, she started as an obese East Dallas housewife (my earliest fear) and has become a strangely dignified woman-identified-woman ex-celebrity (my greatest ambition). I did once run into a dude with whom I once hooked up, and on his arm was an SP lookalike. There was a little heckling involved. Bravo is really offering nothing else. Top Design is terrible, although I am starting to enjoy the commericials and that LA woman who is a “self-described punk” and reminds me of some cranky NW band lady I can’t put my finger on. Not Andrea Zollo, but somebody like that. I am having a little postgame enthusiasm for “Orange Wives” (org- Brittany).

But back to business, Workout- so good, so pointless! “I’m so not fat… maaaybe I’m gay fat.” And Mimi- how entertaining is she? Is she autistic? I like how when nerdy, boring dudes have medium-strange compulsions and antisocial tendencies, they make up Aspberger’s, but when entertaining, manipulative women display truly bizarre, unexplainable behavior, they’re like “annoying bitch!” My boyfriend likened her to a poodle, but I think she’s more like a flat-faced persian. I also really like how they went to a therapist to facilitate their breakup. Why don’t they have breakup therapists, as like, a thing? The world would be a better place!

diet dr pepper and marlboro lights

Y’all know that I have a troublesome yet passionate relationship with the NYer Style issue- as evidenced in my long contemplation of the DVF woman article from last year, and the way that the Prada profile changed my life! Last week’s spring Style ish did not disappoint! Or rather it did, in a resounding way. Profile of Lagerfeld: awesome.

(Picture of KL doing a spider dance in his crazy apartment: mindblowing!)

But then you have Dana Goodyear, the literary Sofia Coppola, hot off the heels of that bratty shit with the Poetry Foundation, profiling the guy from Decades, thus unwelcomely ripping open the world of high end vintage. “I found twenty trunks of Chanel in a musty attic! ha ha!” And then even though the innerworkings of Houston now make me sick, I always enjoy any magazine article that quotes, mentions, or alludes to Becca Cason Thrash, the only Houston socialite I’d give the time of day to- fucking hot at over 50 without looking like a space alien, quoted as saying “If I had to live in a trailer, it’d be the cutest, chicest trailer you ever saw!” Sure, she’s a Republican, but not nearly the unapologetic mastermind that Lynn Wyatt is, not to mention the fact that LW’s son was that guy they caught sucking Fergie’s toes that one time- how sick! But anyway, who cares? The Decades guy’s life sounds envious and awful at the same time.

Then there’s yet another Texas-joint in the issue, Patricia Marx’s tee-hee-Texas-is-so-gauche special edition of Critical Shopper. Who is this lady, and how do I get her job? Cause seriously, even though she hit the nail on the head with high end roadie cups (no explanatory link here, but let me say briefly that it’s not just a Texas rap thing- rich white people in Texas are for real obsessed with having trademark styrofoam cups, for either diet DP or for booze) hegemonic reviews of fashion are pointless, and it’s stupid to talk about how there are like, maaaybe 2,000 ladies in Dallas and Houston who can afford to shop at Neiman’s, and then not point out that the like 6 million who can’t manage to look almost as insane. My sister and I like to talk about the “Texas Bitch”, and that spirit transcends all race and class lines. She could have stopped at Sharpstown or Redbird Malls, EASY. Cause it’s also not like it’s only creepy blonde ladies shopping at Neiman’s. A large part of what makes the Houston Galleria so great it that it’s shopping disneyland for richy latin american nationals, duh.

All this the week that Ray Nasher dies. Did you know that I’ve been to the Nasher residence and ridden in Mrs. Nasher’s caddy? Freakish turn of events, and I still turned out this way.

MONDAY NIGHT JAMS

Therese Edell, From Women’s Faces (1977)

Boisterous, blunt womyn’s folk, about gun control, coming out to your mother, and “Moonflowers” (the ray of). Cackling, hilarious, humorless. Therese launched Michigan. Check out Therese’s interview with Paid My Dues.

Descendents, Somery (1981-1987)

Boisterous, idealistic teen boy/nerd punk, about girls. Squirming, sweet, humorless. Launched the “punk professor” phenomenon and the emo sexism.

p.s. Has the whole trans debate resulted in the internet absence of mostly all amateur history documentation of middle america lesbian life 1975-1990?

p.p.s. You have to find this yrself, but do you know that they sell offish BABY ONZIES and BEER COOZIES at the Descendents online merch stand?

drew and hair

I came home and watched the heinous Barrymore/Fallon Fever Pitch. Which is unbelievable as a yuppie comedy (I’ll take Drew “Little Girl Lost” seriously as a hardworking office lady as soon as I take that cokehead clown seriously as an earnest dude) and in the stellar awfulness of Drew’s hair- frizzy, poorly color corrected, and generally, a mess. Peep this clip (she’s supposed to look like shit, but it doesn’t get much better when she’s supposed to be adorable) if you don’t take my word for it, also notable for the youtube comments of the “JIMMY FALLON ES GAY” ilk.

But then I realized that such hair was shocking in familiarity to my own

Gross. That movie was apalling, anyway, spare the cameo from Ione Skye. baseball? BORING.

This is the only part of sports I care about.

all day in the tre

 

When I can’t sleep, I’ll navigate cities where I used to live in my head, reassuring myself that like the shitty side streets I’ve lived on still exist. Morning and afternoon rush hours, you will find me barrelling through the Third Ward either on my bike, whilst unashamedly listening to Discharge (this is the only thrill of being an old lady), in my boyfriend’s car, groaning at the Writer’s Almanac, or on the Houston Metropolitan Bus, evesdropping. I’m not saying I have a reciprocal relationship with the neighborhood, but I would at least call it familiar.

On Saturday I was riding my bike to work while the Get Your Money Right Summit was about to happen at TSU. Of course I lost all sense of decorum and wove recklessly through light traffic, gawking and hoping to get a glimpse at Ciara. A lady chastised me from her car, “You can’t ride like that around here. It’s dangerous.” Thus leaving me to vacillate between acting snotty at someone telling me to practice bike safety, or to get meek for being reprimanded for being a stupid white person.  Why is are bicycles the ultimate stupid white person accessory? See Gentrifying Asshole Dude in Do the Right Thing for a good example.

On PBS this week, Third Ward, TX, a documentary by the UT film professor who’s also at the head of East Austin Stories. It was mostly Project Row Houses with a little of the Flower Man thrown in, to make the argument of still-standing poverty as outsider art. No acknowledgement that poverty is no joke, no mention of the fact that the neighborhood rotted for decades sitting in the shadows of a self-described “major research university”, whose inventive use of eminent domain continually displaced residents and kept the neighborhood isolated. That the white filmmaker was from Austin gave him a pass from the implications of being a white person in Houston. (Moreso, the cameo from a condo developer probably delivered the point that so few in Houston who have the economic wherewithal would make such a documentary.)

Also seen this week: Frontline (same boring News-as- News series), Shadya, a borderline weepy about an Israeli Arab girl karate champion, Heading South (sex as colonialism), and despite better judgment, a half dozen episodes of Big Love on on-demand. Chloe and M-K Place as mother and daughter crack me up, even though Chloe’s making a point of not even pretending to act; Jeanne Tripplehorn’s ridic sensuality is evident as ever, while the entire thing, I promise, appalls me.

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.