sarcastic fringehead

One entire week I’ve spent tweaking a long, detailed entry about how I really hated “Julie & Julia.” A WEEK. I finally realized that I wasn’t having trouble editing it because it was a terrible piece of writing; rather, it was because I just revived this puppy and do I really want to kick things off brutalizing something I disliked that most people seem to love? I do not. We’re not about the hate here, people.

(I will say THIS about THAT: Had I read the first two lines of Roger Ebert’s review before going out that day, I would have known immediately to spend my movie money elsewhere. Those lines were, more or less, “Have you ever wanted to spend a 3-day bus ride sitting next to Julia Child? Just asking.”)

So I’m going to talk about things I love. I love Project Runway! And it’s back, in a new expanded format. Last week’s All-Stars competition was fun to watch up until the judging, which was insane and wrong, but I’m over it now. Then there’s the series proper, which I’m optimistic about this season – so far I’m rooting for Louise Black, because she made this:

…and, well, I’m considering a Lotto habit that would, if successful, allow me to hire her as my personal stylist. I do recognize that the creation of clothes that I want to wear is not always a path to the top on PR (I still have flashbacks of the judges quizzing Chris March on who exactly would want to wear human hair as I tried to figure out what I had to do to get my hands on that dress [it was strips of hair extensions, it wasn't even gross, but I felt a little Cruella about it]). So I’m trying not to get too attached. But whatever happens, we’ll still have Tim Gunn to root for all season long.

If you also are seriously into PR but you haven’t visited Lifetime’s site for the show, you must go there – unlike its sad old broken Bravo counterpart, it has tons of extra content that’s really worth watching.

What else do I love? I love the new album by The Duckworth Lewis Method, a collaboration between The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon and Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh that is all about – well – cricket. I was frightened by that initially; my favorite sport is, after all, avoiding anything to do with sports. But then I heard the first single and was utterly powerless under its spell.

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If you can’t watch right now, I’ll say if you like early Kinks, the Zombies, XTC or cricket, this is the CD for you.

In local news, I am still obsessed with the lunch I had today at Mani’s Bakery. I got a sandwich called “The Regular” on rosemary bread and it might have been the pinnacle of the sandwich-based narrative of my life. And then there was the caramelized apple cake! We were alarmed by the $9/slice price, but then we saw a slab go past and realized it practically demanded to be shared; huge and overwhelming, yes, but quite delicate in flavor. Mani’s is a health-conscious bakery and cafe that tends toward the whole-grain and fruit-sweetened, so if you’re not that kind of eater it may not be up your alley. If you’re on the fence, this tip may help: When deciding between fruit-sweetened desserts, you’ll rarely go wrong picking one that’s supposed to taste like apples anyway.

I’m going to count this as a clearing-out-bad-karma entry. Back soon!

(That was a metaphor. I am not really on a plane, and is that even impressive anymore?)

Often, when blogs go suddenly quiet, it indicates a crisis – illness, a death in the family, some sort of massive stress. That’s certainly been the case here in the past.

Which is why I’m doubly happy to reveal that since my last post, I have made massive progress on both the health and career fronts. And as of last night, for the first time in nine goddamn years, we live in Los Angeles proper again (the only place I’ve ever been interested in living).

“Proper,” in this case, means near our friends, near the restaurants we like, near the good shopping, near a whole lot of movie theaters, near the music venues we like – near enough to everything that we can make evening plans and actually be able to go home after work to change and get fed. Proper means that we can walk to almost everything we need or want; there are a dozen restaurants within a mile that this vegan-with-food-allergies can get a really good meal, that I know of.

Now that I’ll have a whole life to talk about again, I plan to post a lot more regularly. Oh, don’t worry – I’ll still provide notes from watching TV with my kid. I know that’s why you’re really here.

OK, one quick Wes story: This morning was unnecessarily confrontational. Finally, I convinced him to take a nap by lying down with him on my bed. He was still pretty rageful, but he finally settled.

“Mommy?” he said, turning to me. “I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetie.”

“And you’re not my enemy.”

“No, I’m not. You’re not my enemy either.”

“Yes I am!” [and... out like a light.]

More soon, promise!

I used to work at Hear Music in Santa Monica, before it was a record label or owned by Starbucks or any of that. I loved that job, as I always love every job I have that’s just above minimum wage. Why can’t there be a record store that pays employees $60k a year? But I digress.

This was also in the era in which I used to get debilitating visual migraines (turned out it was an allergy to – wait for it – my allergy shots), and one day I got one that was so severe I had to call R. to come pick me up and curl into a ball behind the desk to wait for him. After a few minutes, one of my coworkers stopped in front of me, looked at me for a second, and said in a determined fashion, “I’m gonna cheer you up.”

She went to the back of the store and returned with a CD, which she shielded from my view as she put it on.

Surely the opening strains of Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” would have perked me up all by themselves. That’s what they’re there for.

But here’s the amazing bonus thing: Throughout the store, everyone – a few coworkers, customers shopping solo and completely immersed in the CD bins – burst into this little hip-out-to-the-side groovy mini-dance at the same time. Nobody but us ever knew it, because they weren’t looking at each other.

It was the closest I’ve ever been to living in a music video.

If you ever have the chance to attempt to recreate this societal phenomenon, I surely recommend it.

Hey kids – I got buried in spam on that last post, so I’ve installed a plugin that, the theory is, will zap it without making you guys do math or figure out convoluted letters or anything. It claims to do this with no false positives, but I’m not all that trusting – so if you attempt to comment here and it doesn’t work, shoot me a note at elizabeth at this domain name and let me know? Thanks!

I’ve got some stories to tell, such as how W. has discovered a new role model in Jack Black, and how my first parental Conversation About Death backfired, but I’ve also got some editing to do today. So I’m going with responsibility over frivolity. Just this once, though!

1. Self-indulgent. Pretty much any creative endeavor is self-indulgent to some degree, isn’t it? The other option appears to be, “I made this music because I wanted to use my gift to touch others. My goal is just to inspire people.” Next thing you know, you’re on a televised talent competition and you’re singing “I Hope You Dance” and Mariah Carey’s “Hero” and “Jesus Take The Wheel” and you’re bathed in white light and reaching out to the camera all Christlike and a sizable portion of the nation is looking at you and thinking, “Jesus, this guy’s a tool.” You get some people thinking that if you go the other route, sure, but you probably have more fun along the way.

Often, from the words surrounding self-indulgent, I suspect that what the speaker/writer means is, “Yeah, I didn’t get this.” But there are times when an alternate phrase might be valuable. I believe that phrase may be: “Frankly, this artist has his head way up his ass.” Try it – see how it works. (I should note that the offending term has been misappropriated by TV’s own Simon Cowell as “indulgent,” which I take to mean the singer has allowed the performance to eat far too much candy and also bought it a puppy.)

2. Emperor’s New Clothes. When you take your turn in a music discussion and announce that, oh, say the new album by Of Montreal is “a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes,” if I recall my fables correctly, the opinion you’ve introduced is something like: “All of you who’ve been talking about how great this is? You are BLIND. That’s right – BLIND. I ALONE am able to see the truth!”

And really, is that polite?

(This applies to other art forms as well, but I didn’t want to have to use ninety slash marks in every sentence. I’m lazy like that.)

The boy and I were driving to town last night, listening to a mix CD. He wanted to know how his Uncle Jon could play all the instruments and sing on a record all by himself, so I explained. He thought for a minute and said, “Mommy, do you remember when you showed me that guy who could play three horns at once?”

It was a few months ago, but hell yeah I remember.

“Do you think Uncle Jon could do that?”

“No,” he said gravely.

“Probably not.”

“But I could!”

Cool!

Just then his grandma called and I passed the phone back to him.

“Grandma, guess what! When I get bigger I’m going to play three saxophones at the same time! … Yeah!… And if I get good at that, I’m gonna play three basses!”

Ladies and gentlemen, my son. Destined to be either a jazz legend or a one-man tribute to Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom.”

I have been loving the Internet this week, you guys. Despite the latest hideous Facebook makeover (do they even have a QA process?), it’s continued to be a great tool for finding long-lost people whom I adore, and also for finding out that my friend Scott should totally move to the country. Over on Twitter, an application that would be perfect if it offered a little more control, someone’s engineered a little more control with TwitterSnooze, which allows you to stop following someone for a limited amount of time – an ability whose usefulness may escape you if you don’t, say, follow a person who liveTweets three Wednesday night TV shows that you don’t watch.

Also using the Internet, I was able to track down a store in the greater LA area (Follow Your Heart in Canoga Park) that carried dairy-free chocolate bunnies so I don’t have to order that crap from Portland with dry ice and such to give my allergic child a happy holiday. And yes, my kid DOES have to have a chocolate bunny at Easter; we’re not religious, but we feel very strongly about inexplicable people and animals who show up your house to bring you junk.

But here is where I had the most fun. If you have had the misfortune to be cornered by me on the subject of American Idol this season, you know I kind of like contestant Adam Lambert. Like, to the point where I wish all those other people would quit interrupting The Adam Lambert Show with their singing and whatnot. One of the reasons I like him is that he is a big ol’ record geek; not like I’m short on those people in my world, but I don’t know many who are 27. And what really surprised me was that we share a favorite completely obscure band, Mother’s Finest. Here, watch Adam talk about them with the fevered eyes of the true believer:

Yeah. I was happy to find out about the Germany thing, because I, who could technically be his mom, am too young to know about Mother’s Finest; I spent my youth hanging out with a bunch of musicians about 10 years my senior, some of them from the South. That’s my excuse. And I’d wondered what his was.

Say Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan and Led Zeppelin formed a supergroup. You’re kind of close to what they sound like. You cannot imagine how dynamic they were (I assume still are) live. I have been to approximately one gazillion concerts – most of them by people who are considered great performers – and nobody touches MF. You can’t squeeze that kind of power into the space of a YouTube video, but here’s a track from what I believe is the concert Adam described seeing:

So, back to my point about loving the Internet: People much younger than I, possibly younger than Adam, are seeing that first video on YouTube, looking up something very much like the second video, going, “Hey, this band is great! Why haven’t I heard of them?” I’ve been helping some people out with collections of MP3s available on Amazon that make a good $10 introduction.

So: Because a kid who is a frontrunner on American Idol in 2009 turned on a television in Germany in 2003 and mentioned it on a clip that was only available on iPhones and on YouTube, one of the most underrated bands of the early ’70s gets a new burst of life.

That’s just cool.

I am not, you’ll be fascinated to learn, a brand loyalist when it comes to deodorant. I don’t have any unusual needs in that area, so I buy what’s on sale and doesn’t smell perfumey.

Just a few weeks back, I noticed that Degree was rather nicer than the others, in that it does not feel all pinchy going on. So that’s it, thought I, I am buying Degree from now on.

Wouldn’t you know, within minutes of my making this decision Degree went all gender-segregated. While I’m more sympathetic for the consternation this might cause my acquaintances who aren’t exactly straight down that M/F divide, even I as a clearly delineated woman have problems with this.

You know what Degree Men does? It protects men who takes risks. BAD ASS. If you are human-flying it up the side of a skyscraper and you lose your grip, Degree Men’s Action Fumes(TM) will suck you back to safety like a huge magnet. At some point in that story, I started making shit up, but it was a tiny bit later than one would hope.

At this point, I’m pretty stoked, as you can imagine. What will Degree Women protect me from? Maybe I can have another baby now without all that pesky hyperemesis and Restless Leg Syndrome and whatever that thing that made me itch until I wished I were dead was! Let’s take a look at Degree Women’s tagline – oh my!

Dare to Feel.

DARE. to FEEL.

Dare to feeeeeeeeeeeeeeel.

Yeah. Somewhat ironically, I’m not feelin’ it.

My simple, clear-cut consumer plan now contains a spanner in its works. Because it’s going to be embarrassing going to the drugstore and buying that. And yet – not pinchy.

So I did it the other day. I looked at the array of different Degree for Women varieties and yeah, they were just as sexist and eyeroll-inducing as you’d think. EXCEPT. There was one style that came in the girl-deodorant equivalent of a plain brown wrapper – pale-blue with the word “Women” on it in a discreet light gray. I bought it, naturally, but couldn’t help wondering if it hadn’t been the result of a meeting on how a lot of women were going to find this “Dare to Feel” thing embarrassing, offensive, or both – so let’s throw ‘em a bone. Is it worse if they KNOW they’re being condescending? I’m not sure.

The next day, I saw another deodorant in our bathroom from an angle I usually don’t, and learned this: “If you don’t know whether or not you have an iron, you are a Mitchum Man.”

You guys.

I’m a Mitchum Man.

You know what this means, don’t you?

Had I seen this two days earlier, I could have been protected while I took risks.

Sometimes life’s just not fair.

And quite possibly more than most. Being honest here. HOWEVER.

I would like to state for the record that I had NOTHING – N-O-T-H-I-N-G – to do with the fact that, when we’re outside somewhere and my child spots a smoker, this is what he does.

[freezes, points]

AHHHHHHH! OH NO! OH NO! Somebody’s smoking! What can we do, Mommy? Where can we go to be safe? QUICK! RUN!

In real life, I’m trying to settle him down on that issue. In blog life, it’s kind of hilarious.

NINE.

I keep reading them over and thinking I sound like Grandpa Simpson. Which is not my intention.

I’ll be back soon, promise. In the meantime, who’s watching The Amazing Race? Looks like a good one this year. I’m fully rooting for Mike and Mel White, but there are a couple other teams I could easily get behind if tragic circumstance decreed that necessity.

And on American Idol, I’m behind Adam Lambert, who is not really my sort of thing musically but is so over-the-top good at his sort of thing that I have to admire it.

Let’s talk TV. Save me from old-codger rantiness. I’d do it for you.