Home Sweet Home?

After spending Christmas in NY, M and I returned home to Kaya last night. It always feels strange flying into Chicago - I'm always like, what am I doing here? And then: oh yeah, I live here. Anyway, it was only a short trip, but it felt like ages. We saw a lot of friends, spent time with my sister and my brother-in-law, went to a few museums, a party in a music studio, had Christmas dinner with a friend and a couple of dogs (pics coming soon, perhaps) and otherwise hung out, walked around, ate great food and did some shopping. M gave me some beautiful and wonderful presents and we had a nice time laying around the hotel and shopping at the Strand (2nd fave bookstore in US). Well, hope you all have a happy New Year's Eve and a prosperous 2006.

An Open Letter to Tyra Banks

Tyra, there is only one beautiful but strange girl standing before me. Some of our judges, namely me, think that she is TOO strange to continue to receive our viewership. She's a little mean. And our judges are wondering what's. Up. With. The. Enunciation? We can understand you, you don't have to talk like that. You know how sometimes you tell the outrageous girls that they have TOO much personality and the quiet ones that they don't have ENOUGH personality? Or the short ones that they're too short and the "plus" sized ones that they'll never have enough personality to make up for being a size... 12? Well, WE don't like it when you do that creepy flutter thing with your eyelids when you say "One of you. Will be. Eliminated." Our judges think you need to tone it the eff down. You need to be less. Insect-like. Because you. Scare. Me. TYRA! I have never in my life screamed at a supermodel like I am screaming at you now! Your show used to be cool! And it's like you don't even care! I care! The judges care! So get it together before your next season. Also, get rid of Jay and Miss Jay - they're even more bizarre than you.

movies, music

On Sat. Night Live I saw this cool musician - James Blunt - I'm really digging him. Here are a few songs. Had a pretty nice weekend - met up with an old friend of mine on Michigan Ave. on Saturday. Was a total madhouse down there- tried to do a little Christmas shopping but started getting overwhelmed by crowds and had to leave. Watched Melinda and Melinda which was SO terrible. I've just about had it with Woody Allen. Also saw Bruce Almighty and it wasn't as bad as I've heard - although the pseudo-God bits were really stupid. I hate movies about religion, or rather, movies which dance around religion. Odd trivia: Steve Carrell is in both those movies. I mean, the fact that Woody Allen put him in one of his movies shows you just how much the old man's lost it. Also saw Aeon Flux. It was also mostly terrible but we had a good time watching it.

high school music

Got this idea from Deevan to go to musicoutfitters.com and enter in the year of my high school graduation for the top 100 list of music that year. I'm 1992, a good year, I think - or at least I liked it. Here are the songs I really liked:
7. My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It), En Vogue
13. I'm Too Sexy, Right Said Fred
39. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
44. Set Adrift On Memory Bliss, P.M. Dawn
57. Mysterious Ways, U2
60. One, U2
71. Friday I'm In Love, Cure
75. Rhythm Is A Dancer, Snap
100. I Can't Make You Love Me, Bonnie Raitt

Here's what I hated:
15. Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus 16
16. I'll Be There, Mariah Carey
46. 2 Legit 2 Quit, Hammer
59. How Do You Talk To An Angel, Heights
91. That's What Love Is For, Amy Grant

Yelch, there was a lot of Amy Grant out that year. As you can see, I was a big U2 fan - still am. Hmm... now I just looked up the year I was born. Here are the songs I like:
12. Jungle Boogie, Kool and The Gang
18. Sunshine On My Shoulder, John Denver
20. Hooked On A Feeling, Blue Swede
39. Top Of The World, Carpenters
49. Waterloo, Abba
88. Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing, Stevie Wonder
97. I Honestly Love You, Olivia Newton-John

Wow, I didn't know Olivia Newton-John was that old. I should download Hooked a Feeling, that's a REALLY good song. Top of the World makes me laugh. Probably my mom sang that to me, she loves The Carpenters. Now I just looked up the year I got married. Here's what I liked:
2. The Boy Is Mine, Brandy and Monica
10. I Don't Want To Wait, Paula Cole
28. Sex And Candy, Marcy Playground
35. Tubthumping, Chumbawamba
75. Ray Of Light, Madonna
79. Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve

Here's what I hate(d):
3. You're Still The One, Shania Twain
5. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
13. My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion

Indiana boy makes good

Last night my brother-in-law, Lyman, was on Letterman! Regis Philbin has a christmas cd and he played backup while Regis sort of what do you call it? Chanteused Rudolph, my least favorite christmas song, which made it very difficult to sleep. Occasionally Donald Trump would bop out and shout something. It was a very odd, sort of post-modern performance. The cool thing is, Lyman was standing right behind Regis, so he was on the whole time. We'll have to keep out eyes peeled on his blog to see what he has to say about the experience. BTW, L. has released his first solo cd - check it out.

And now, a word on Letterman. First off, what is WITH Paul Schaffer? The dude's a total freak. I mean, how much coke do these guys do before they go on the show? Also, Colin Hanks was on, who in his Hanksiness is quite unbearable. I'd like to know, does Tom Hanks have other children who are exact clones of himself that we'll have to endure for generations to come? Will the world will forever be plagued with Hankses and will they all have that same annoying way of talking as if everything they say is like, SO interesting?

4:20

Where am I going to get more stuffing?

11am

Ate last of Thanksgiving stuffing.

It's too easy (get it?!?!)

What do you think Paris Hilton's perfume smells like?

So, I had a great Thanksgiving. I hope all my reader did too! M. made a flow chart for the dinner preparation - I'm sure you all had one - time on the horizontal axis, dishes on the vertical. That last half-hour is a doozy, but it all worked out. I got a lot of writing and applicationing done, and finished grading my student's papers. I was thankful for that. (:

Do what is right, or do what is easy?

I had a great weekend this past - finished writing my chapter with only a little bit of anxiety and weeping, and then on Sat. went to visit the new baby, then M and I ate some really good BBQ. Yesterday we saw Harry Potter, which was fun to watch. I wrote a review of it on my website. My agenda for this week is to grade papers, make presentation for my Rodin class, meet with advisor re: thesis chapter and make any necessary changes, buy gold heels if I can find perfect pair, clean house, get oil change, make Thanksgiving dinner, entertain friends and mail out first grad application. Easy.

I have another weekend of serious writing ahead of me to finish up this Whistler chapter I'm writing - then I'm going to move on to van Gogh. The last few weekends I've been working really hard on Whistler, but it's always a bit difficult to get rolling - for some reason, my house has to absolutely spotless before I can concentrate.

Dudes! My brother-in-law's band was on NPR - how cool is that? You can listen to a sample - it's really great.

Well, aside from writing there's nothing on my weekend agenda aside from checking out the new Harry Potter movie - oh! That reminds me - so, we're taking the L home today and there's this dude sitting next to us, and he's wearing a wizard robe (read: black graduation gown) and a Griffendore scarf - except he totally looks like Draco Malfoy because he's got this platinum blonde hair - except he's like, my age. So, we're all like, he should wear a Slitherin scarf.

schadenfreude

Today I have an opportunity to use one of my favorite words, schadenfreude, because I see that Bush's approval ratings are at an All Time Low. This is apparently even lower than the previous All Time Low his ratings were at. According to CNN.com, his ratings for "trustworthiness" are also at an All Time Low. I aim my schadenfreude at both Bush and people who voted for Bush, so... take that. Generally I do not enjoy watching others fail, but in this situation, I do. The only downside is that he drags the whole country down the toilet with him. Anyway, another of my favorite words is "tony" which was used in a review of my brother-in-law's show in the New Yorker, in reference to the venue, not the performance. I managed to slip "tony" into my thesis - I hope my advisor doesn't ask me to cut it. We have slightly different ideas about writing, I think it's going to come to a head over the use of exclamation marks. I would like to use one.

In case you're wondering, I absolutely hate the word "intimate". It makes me want to throw up. Also I hate "anthropomorphic." Anne Rice totally ruined that one for me, but everybody has to use "intimate", don't they? Ugh.

Kids, I hate to tell you what I watched on television last night. I did give in to every temptation. I watched models cry and get drunk and cry and act like insane divas and watched Tyra at her most bizarre, and I watched a crazy, toothless woman from "God's country" freak out and scream about horoscopes and mandalas, which she referred to as "dark things" and of the devil or something. Instead of making me feel intellectually superior, I just got depressed in a blue state kind of way and thought it's all doom, doom, if we can't understand each other, and if people like that are allowed to vote. She is surely anti-abortion, and I doubt she understands the importance of upcoming privacy issues in the supreme court. I'm going to have to take a hard line and force myself to never watch Trading Spouses again, and I hate to say it, but ANTM is looking pretty shaky too.

What's on?

Doesn't the Colbert Report suck? What a disappointment. I don't like Stephen Colbert 'cause he has a face, I like to say, that I don't like. But he really does, you know? If you have a face like that, I'm sorry, but I won't like you. But anyway, you're almost guaranteed to be a jerk, just like all guys who have a face like that are. In other TV news, Monday's season premier of Arrested development was hilarious. "Church and State Fair"! That kills me! Also I can't get enough of America's Next Top Model. I'm totally over The Gilmore Girls - I mean, how boring can one show get? OMG, I don't know WHY, really, but last week for some reason I watched a Trading Spouses or something? And you know they're always making these ridiculous pairs? They're like, "Let's see what happens when we put vegetarian, African American woman from NYC who works for the ACLU in the home of a bunch of rednecks in Tennessee who run a pig farm!" Anyway, in this one, it was, "Let's see what happens when we put an ignorant born-again Christian in the home of some light-weight hippies who check their horoscope in the morning!" Well, I'll tell you, she totally freaked out. She freaked out so hard, it was a two parter, and ever since then I've been absolutely torn as to whether I should watch the second half, which very well could have been on last night. OMG, WHAT did I just DO? I checked the TV listings. It's on TONIGHT after ANTM. Oh God! "Let's find out if Kelly will watch the most ridiculous show on earth that will make her feel like friggin' Einstein or be responsible and finish grading the 27 papers she still has left!" Stay tuned!

What a weekend!

Oh, my friends, it's been quite a weekend. I spent most of it working on my thesis, or rather, a small part of my thesis, which was at times agonizing, at times thrilling - it could be the best or the worst work I've ever done. We'll see what my advisor has to say about it. Went out for dinner with the gang on Friday night and had a terrific time except for this crazy group of drunkards sitting behind us whose conversation started out salty and ultimately crescendoed to the point where I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering if a beer bottle was going to be broken over my head. After they stumbled out to the parking lot to solve their problems in more sophisticated ways, like passing out in the backs of their el dorados, our gang had a little laugh about what our favorite lines were. Lines so salty, I tell you, that I hesitate to write them down because I'm wondering if any young people might read my blog. Anyway, Sat. it was work work work on my thesis all day, with a break to go shopping for the new Margaret Atwood for me and Quake 4 for M. The Penelopiad is a super-quick read - I finished it in a couple of hours, and really excellent. I only wish it had been longer, because now I don't have anything else to read. Except for, uh, books and books on 19th century art. If you also want a review of Quake 4, I can tell you that Mike seemed amused, although not obsessed - even now, he is not playing it, for example. I was looking over at it while I was writing earlier, and I can tell you it looked kind of gross. He said some characters were called, like, Strogrose, or something, and I said, "they're SO GROSS!" Get it?!?! OMG, I'm such a dork.

Oh, I almost forgot

So, the headline on CNN.com tonight is "Bush to Unveil Bird Flu Strategy." D'Oh! Don't they mean "Bush to Unveil Bird Flu Strategery"? Well, while I'm thrilled that the Bush Administration is finally taking some heat, I'm naturally distressed that the new Supreme Court nominee is not only likely to remove any number of women's and civil rights, but to have us all dressed like the Amish, with mandatory prayer every morning and I'm going to end up changing my name to Ofmike. Also, what's all this I'm reading about "President Bush caved to pressure from the radical fringe of the Republican Party and nominated Samuel Alito..." (MoveOn.org)? I mean, the last time I checked, Bush LED the radical fringe of the Republican Party, in a flight jacket.

Last week Mike and I had a fabulous week out of town, came back to Chicago and held a baby shower for our friends J&O. It was great fun, everyone wore cool costumes and there were some super-cute kids. One of whom approached me with crumbs all over his lion fur to ask me if I had "a very small vacuum cleaner?" I said, "Why do you need a small vacuum cleaner?" and he said, "Oh, there's tons of cracker crumbs in the other room." Ah, kids! I hope J&O have a kid that's even half as cute as that one. This weekend we saw Night of the Hunter, which ultimately didn't make any sense. Right now I'm watching Five Easy Pieces but it's VERY dull. Same for An American in Paris from last night.

week in review

Ugh, the washing machines in our apartment building are broken and I had to go to the mat. There's nothing I hate more in the world than going to the mat. Ugh. Now my whole body's soaked with the human misery that every laundromat in this damn country is seeped in. Well, I've had a busy week but parts of it have been fun. I saw a preview of Shopgirl which I really enjoyed, despite Steve Martin. I hope to get around to writing a review for my website. Classes were great. Had a few dinners with friends which were really nice, went out with a friend from school, which was fun. Been cleaning the apartment all week in preparation for upcoming party but somehow looks just as dirty as it ever did. Oh well, we're sloppy, perhaps guests will understand.

Grandma's featherbed

This weekend we went to M's grandma's house in Rockville, Indiana. I had a nice time riding in the car with Mike, listening to new music. I'm trying to decide if I like the new Fiona Apple album (I think I don't) I really dig this guy, Tim Fite, whose album Gone Ain't Gone is described as 'apparently largely an assembled patchwork of samples, or, as his label would have it, "a wry, anachronistic, copyright-defying, country/hip-hop collage" that was "made mostly from CDs rescued from dollar bins."' You can listen to No Good Here if this link works. Lately I've also been listening to some really great African Music - the album Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou & Mariam. Oh, I already blogged about that, I think. And this song Keleya from an album called World Psychedelic Classics 3: Love's a Real Thing, the Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa. I wonder if the rest of the album is that good?

So, in Indiana we had a chance to "take in the colors" as they say 'round those parts, and to be viewed as apparently the total outsiders that we are. While inquiring into the quality of a local Terre Haute microbrew, we were asked immediately, "Where you from?" only to receive a sad shake of the head, and a "You won't like it" after replying, "Chicago." We overheard another hilarious exchange at a booth at the Covered Bridge Festival, whereby the kind proprietor inquired of his customers, "Is she a dainty girl or a big, heavy girl?" I was laughing too hard to hear the rest, but M said they looked at each other and seriously said, "Medium."

I had a great weekend - spend a lot of time with my good friend J, who, in the full bloom of pregnancy, is much fun to be around. We saw Wallace and Gromit, which was great, had Indian buffet on Devon Ave., and another night all went out for great Italian food in Evanston. M and I decorated our house for Halloween, Martha-style. It looks so good I scare myself every time I walk down the hallway. I got this really great cd by Amadou & Mariam, which I've been wearing out. Oh, I just Googled them. They're both blind. I took my first group of students for a short tour at the Art Institute and they applauded at the end. It was really embarrassing, but also made me feel like a million bucks. I'm really proud of my students, almost all of them are getting As on their first paper.

Update!

Ok! I just finished a Sudoku in like 5 minutes and now I feel like a total genius. So what if it was a "gentle" one? Now I'm ready to face the day. After one more cup of coffee and a shower...

Sudoku Madness

Geez I hate hot weather. What is going on? It's October and last night we had our air conditioner on. Well, my friends, I failed at two Sudokus yesterday and that really sucked. Now I'm like, Do I do another Sudoku? What if I get it wrong? Thing is, when I finish one, especially in one train ride, I feel like a genius, when I don't, I feel like an idiot for a week. Damn Sudokus for ever coming into my life in the first place!

Cronyism!

After GW nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court position left vacant by Sandra Day O'Connor, I started wondering what it would be like if I were president, and if I nominated all my friends to run the country with me, and whether my friends or GW's friends would do a better job. I decided pretty much across the board that my friends would do better, even though they might do badly, which, as long as things didn't end in a total disaster every time they picked up the phone, would still put them ahead of these hillbilly cronies Bush has surrounded himself with. Meanwhile, everyone's all, Who IS this Miers person? Where does she stand on women's rights? Where does she stand on privacy? Death penalty? She's from goddamn Texas, people! Where do you THINK she stands on those issues?

apocalypses?

Dudes, is this a sign of the apocalypse? Yesterday George Bush of all people asks us to conserve energy and today Tom Delay steps down? I don't really understand why, but I'm excited. Also, In Your Face, city of Chicago - I have avoided not one but two off-street parking violations for "street cleaning", as you like to call it. That's right - I moved my car. And you suffered. AND, you actually cleaned the street this morning - so you lose - somehow. ALSO, I'm kind of drunk.

Totally worth it

I, as you may know, am really into products. Hair, face, nails - I have a terribly nice collection of little bottles. I love Sephora. So what if I don't use them on a daily basis? Sometimes I do, and then I feel good. Or, as my mother might say, I *look* good. When I wear makeup. Anyway, I MUST share with you the wonderful product which is Two Faced Lip Injection, which is a lipstick that causes the blood vessels in your lips to dilate or something and then your lips get a little puffy. Which is really cool if your me and you have thin little baby lips. Or, as my mother might say: lizard lips. The only drawback is what Two Faced refers to as a "slightly intense tingle" that may last 5-10 minutes. The "tingle" feels kind of like a needle stabbing in and out of your lips, but it's totally worth it.

Dudes, have you seen this? Kanye West burst onto my radar I guess a little bit later than it did the rest of the world when I saw him declaring, "George Bush does not care about black people" (See my Sept. 7th entry) next to a frazzled Mike Meyers. I was later informed that KW is the new innovator in music. Since then some person called the Incredible KO has remixed West's Golddigger (does the rest of the album sound that good? I'm totally getting it.) into a song and video called, guess what? George Bush Don't Like Black People. It's great.

Before and After

Mike and I took a pic of ourselves yesterday to present a then&now for the faithful reader. Frankly I think we look better now. We look a little AAAAHHH! in the 1998 version. To celebrate our anniversary we went to one of our fave Andersonville restaurants, Tomboy. They cook a mean steak. AND, they gave us a free and fancy creme brulee because it was our anniversary! Isn't that nice?

Seven years

Today is our seventh wedding anniversary! Isn't that awesome? Apparently we've exceeded the national average. Here's what we all looked like seven years ago today.

If Mike read my blog, I might give him a special shout out to tell him how much I love him, and he's the best thing that's ever come my way, but I guess I'll just tell him in person tonight over dinner.

A whole sack!

Today Mike and I rode our bikes to the Lincoln Park Zoo and we had a great afternoon walking around looking at animals. It was AWESOME! We saw a bat pee, and we saw a bat's penis, which is rather large, and a bat's balls, which are also large, and we saw Naked Moles, and we saw a bunch of mongeese (?) mongooses eat a sack full of dead mice! Then we stood around awkwardly while some parents had to explain the harsh realities of life to their children before they were ready. And we saw a museum dude pick up an armadillo and show us how it rolled into a little bowling ball. And we saw a Drill monkey bare its teeth at another monkey. I saw a snake wind itself into a coil just like a cat lying down for a nap. And we saw a tiny Pied Tamarin which looked into the eyes of everyone at the glass of his habitat. It was like being looked at by... I don't know... an evil sprite. Oh boy, it was exciting. I don't know when I've ever had so much fun at a zoo.

Going to the dogs

Whoa. I just saw something I never thought I'd see - Martha Stewart on what appeared to be the premier of her new tv show, but not the Apprentice one, displaying a rather nice sense of humor about her Big House experience, and showing her audience what kind of food she used to make in the microwave when she was in the slammer. I guess so, like, if one of her viewers ever finds him or herself in prison, they too can make this stuff. Martha said when she was in prison she bought all this stuff from some kind of cantina, and she had to buy plastic silverware and plastic plates and it sounds like she walked around in the yard picking dandelion leaves and eating them for dinner on white bread. Wouldn't it be funny if the entire show is focused on how to amuse yourself while you're in prison? On accounta, some of the more pessimistic of us might claim that we all live in a prison. Of our own making. You know? Also she brought her dogs on the show, which I thought was kind of wacky in a Sharon Osbourne kind of way. Speaking of Martha's dogs, Michel on the Gilmore Girls named his dogs Paw Paw and Chin Chin, which I think is SO hilarious. I wrote about that on my other blog, last year.

I am so angry

A website called Think Progress has posted a timeline of Hurricane Katrina and the absurd activities of the Bush administration. If you're not already steaming mad about Bush continuing his FIVE WEEK vacation (a vacation that I have heard described as something that would make aristrocratic Europeans blush), wait 'til you read about Rumsfeld sitting in the owner's box at a Padres baseball game, Condoleeza Rice buying shoes and taking in a show in Manhattan, and the distractions caused when Bush finally noticed that an American city lies in ruins and trotted down there to tell FEMA director Michael Brown what a good job he was doing. The small amount of pleasure I receive with the knowledge that Condi was booed at Spamalot does nothing to lift the feeling of utter despair I feel when think of a nursing home in New Orleans full of dead bodies, abandoned animals wandering the streets covered in oil and toxins, starving, and the suspicion that no one will pay for their crimes against humanity.

Speaking out!

As the House and the Senate urge us all not to go placing blame for the untold deaths in New Orleans, I've been impressed by a few public figures who are willing to point fingers - notably Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, who played a clip of GW on Good Morning America saying, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." (Sept. 1) Of course, many, many people anticipated not just a breach, but the total destruction of the levees - unfortunately not Michael D. Brown, head of FEMA, who Bush said was doing "a heck of a job." Check out Kanye West saying it like it is during the Concert for Hurricane Relief and Celine Dion on Larry King (scroll down, it's on the right). These celebrities are generally described as "losing it" or "getting emotional" during their impassioned pleas, but if you ask me, it's well past time to get friggin' emotional about the situation!

Don't it make the red states blue?

I have found it necessary to weigh in, as all bloggers must, on the situation in New Orleans. I was moved and excited by Mayor Ray Nagin's radio address of Sept. 2 in which he called out President Bush for ignoring the crisis and the total lack or response both before and after the disaster in the south. Wouldn't it be amazing if more politicians spoke from their hearts, instead of in the prepared statements of Scott McClellan? Like everyone else, I was wondering why a federal response to this federal problem took, what? 6 days? When you can DRIVE from Washington DC to New Orleans in 16 hours?!? And it takes their poor beleaguered mayor to break down in tears before he gets some goddamn assistance? There's not a single silver lining to this sad story in which finally even southerners are realizing that the Republican administration does not and never will have the interests of poor Americans on their agenda, even to keep them from dying in droves in the streets of our own damn country. And thank you VERY much, William H. Rehnquist. You couldn't have picked a better time to die so Bush could just dick us one more time in a very bad week.

Don't try this at home

So, I've been sick all week, as I told ya, and then I remembered my brother-in-law bringing up ear candling, and I thought, "maybe I should have my ear candled" and so I bought some and then Mike and I did it. If ear candling's not on your radar, it's this possibly faux healthy thing you can do - there was a lot of chatter about it when we lived in San Francisco - whachado is, you put a hollow candle in your ear and you light the other end, and then something happens. Well, you're supposed to feel healthy. In ACTUALITY, we discovered, what happens is, you put one end of the candle in your ear, light the other end, and essentially what you've got is a giant torch in your ear. I'm talking about big flames. And, so, you're supposed to put like a paper plate or something around the candle so ashes and falling flames don't land on your face. Here's a tip, uh... don't use a plastic plate. So, after running around with a flaming plastic plate and blowing the smoke out of living room, we resumed the "relaxing, calming sensation" of ear candling. I don't know... the jury's still out on whether it works or not, I think I'm still kind of sick - but, unburned!

a mighty harvest

I've finally broken down to peer pressure and the demands of a lazy lifestyle and got myself a blog template-thingy where I suppose my many many readers can post comments and so on. So, post away! Alas, I've been really sick this week. I had big plans involving myself and the beach and some books, and instead it's been me, the couch, daytime television and every medicine in my cabinet, although nothing's helped, let me tell you. Exciting news: we planted tomatoes and now we're having a big harvest! Beautiful, perfect tomatoes and bruschetta every night! Wee!