sarcastic fringehead

This year-old Hawksley Workman concert from CBC is not the best live performance I’ve ever heard from him; however, it’s the best one that’s streaming for free on the internet (and it’s pretty damn great even with the disclaimers). My only real complaint is that they’ve clearly scissored out a ton of his famously surreal between-songs banter (he’s a bit like Robyn Hitchcock, if Hitchcock were less about insects and eyeballs and more about chocolate and puppies), but hey, clearly they had a length to come in under so here you have it.

The following YouTube video is here for a different reason. I could totally find better footage/audio of Duke Special for you, even streaming free, but that material would not provide the additional pleasures of staring at the screen throughout, thinking, “Why is this happening? In this place? There must be a backstory that makes sense… oh, wait, I think I have it – no, no that doesn’t work.” (There are five more parts to the story if you find that you enjoy the game as much as I did, or if you’re just digging the concert.)

(I feel as if I should hold an “explain this video” contest, but we all know I’d forget to put the prize in the mail. Feel free to play anyway!)

Guess what time it was last week?

First mammogram time!

Frankly, I was annoyed more than anything; I’m in zero cancer risk groups, and I have a longstanding theory – which there’s quite a lot of evidence behind by now – that while I am enormously susceptible to diseases that make you WISH you were dead, I will never get one that stands a chance of actually killing me. This is not hubris but wistfulness, if you’ve read correctly.

So if I come back here and tell you the test was positive, you can feel free to laugh at me. I realize it will seem inappropriate, but do it anyway. I’ll have earned it.

I had heard that it was going to hurt, a lot. It probably did, actually, but not nearly as much as I thought. Or it WOULDN’T HAVE…

For the uninitiated, they basically smash your boobs flat between two flat plates, from several angles, and take a picture. While things were being “positioned” for the shot from the side, I noticed but did not comment on one of those plates poking into my collarbone.

Women who are one or more years younger than I: If you notice? Comment on. If you don’t, see, you end up with one of your bones being smashed between two big heavy things with a crapload of pressure behind them. This sucks.

But not QUITE as much as my Extremely Meek Childhood Self making an unwelcome reappearance and reacting as such: “Oh, that hurts. Well, it’ll only be another second or two; I don’t think the bone will break. I just won’t say anything.”

Oh, Extremely Meek Childhood Self. You suck SO HARD. Although I suppose it would have been an amusing conversation piece, to come out of a routine medical test in a cast. Ha ha ha.

The other thing I noticed, which is quite minor compared to the whole bone-crushing potential, is that it was the weirdest and most awkward use of hospital gowns ever. You put it on tied in the front (which in this particular model didn’t, you know, work) and then do all this elaborate removing and folding and tucking to expose the current patient. Then you cover that side up and do the whole routine over again.

OK.

Nobody has ever accused me of being an exhibitionist.

But honestly, if you’ve already got one bosom out in the open air, is it really more traumatic to have ‘em both on temporary display? My vote: No. Perhaps you could fill out a little card about whether you prefer increased exposure to uncomfortable contortion?

I hope we have all learned something today. I know I probably haven’t.

It’s been quite a hectic week here in my skull. How are all you lovely people out there? Good? Great!

I’ve been trying to plan a local-area relocation, which in our case is far more complicated than it should ever be for anyone, even HITLER. R. and I always have a bit of an adventure, as between us we have a mindboggling lists of Must-Haves and Must-Not-Haves for a new apartment, everything from a big kitchen to no wool carpet to being at least a mile from the freeway (note to out-of-towners: we have A LOT of freeways) to having a guarantee that there have never been pets in the unit (allergies) to being in an urban neighborhood where you can walk to stuff… and can that all be within our budget, please?

Because W. is 4, we have to add to the mix: Is there a decent preschool we can afford that has an immediate opening, and is the school district decent because oh my lord I don’t want to move again in a year?

I looked up the symptoms of fibromyalgia recently, and one that made me laugh (chronic pain gives you a weird sense of humor) was “inability to multitask.” Funny because: yes, exactly, but it never occurred to me that was a symptom of anything. I should be specific here: under normal circumstances, I am a genius multitasker, the person who can be given 20 tasks and 20 deadlines and keep your company together by also remembering all the stuff you forgot that wasn’t even my job. So inability to multitask, for me, might mean I’m working at a normal-people level (I’m not really sure, I haven’t done a focus group on it or anything). My point – there is one, and related to the paragraphs before even! – is that this process is apparently one higher than the number of tasks I can handle. Because if you’ve ever watched an engine struggle to spark and then die? I have that exact feeling in my head.

So hey, it’s a good thing I have some things to do this weekend! Saturday night, my friend Michele and I are going to the Greg Proops Chat Show at Largo. This monthly live talk show is pretty much my favorite thing happening in Los Angeles, and yes, I say that with the full awareness that 50 amazing things are happening within the city limits at any given time. There’s comedy, music, and of course, chat; the guests that have been announced so far for Saturday are Margaret Cho and Andy Richter. I know, pretty cool, huh?

For years now, I have had a secret dream: to leave and return to Largo within 12 hours. That weirdly specific fantasy will become reality on Sunday, for the venue is presenting its first children’s concert at 11am, and lucky for me I have a child. The groundbreaking artist in question will be Justin Roberts, who my kid likes, which puts him on a list of maybe 4-5 children’s recording artists, because my boy, he likes the big people’s music (so far, anyway). Those people usually play past his bedtime. Or are dead. Anyway, I’m not hugely familiar with Mr. Roberts’ oeuvre, but I have liked what I’ve heard, and kids’ music tends to separate into good and evil pretty quickly.

I’m hoping this leads to more family shows; until now, McCabe’s has been the best bet in town, but I think – while I don’t want to endorse a series that doesn’t technically exist yet – Largo would be better. For one thing, although I’m quite certain nobody has ever gone to Largo purely out of a desire to sit in their comfy, comfy chairs, they’re still a few steps up from McCabe’s folding jobbies; I am old and broken-down and this matters to me. But not as much as this: McCabe’s books some seriously great people, but if you see a kids’ show with an artist you’ve never heard of, you can’t really go confident that they’ll be great too. I learned this lesson up close, and quite frankly I still don’t want to talk about it. I really, really, really don’t think a Largo series would be like that. So bring your kids if you’ve got ‘em, because this could be the start of something really cool.

Wouldn’t it be great if the next time I posted I’d found an apartment and moved and gotten the kid in school stuff ? Like, in 3 days? Yeah, I don’t think it’ll happen either. Wish me luck!

It was a strange day today. The first crisis came when the year-end wrap-up I’d been working on for two days turned out to have been autosaving a very, very early version (I am 99% sure that rather than being a WordPress problem, it involved my pathetic AT&T internet connection, which disconnects itself every 5 minutes or so). It was totally comprehensive and multimedia, too.

After that I got lost for over half an hour trying to get to the local Trader Joe’s, somehow badly strained my right shoulder getting out of the car (I am aware this makes no sense), had a borderline panic attack based on too many people + forgotten shopping list, and on the way home, almost mowed down a waiter in a crosswalk.

So once home, I thought I’ll bake some potatoes, that’s easy enough. And the handle fell off the oven door.

I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that all this mischief and borderline catastrophe was caused by a gremlin. A gremlin who came to bring us these glad tidings: “STOP FREAKING THINKING ABOUT 2008!”

That gremlin is correct. Even though my essay was about the good things the year brought, I kept finding myself drifting into angry rants about the OTHER stuff. Before 2008, I was not even capable of angry rants. It was only the second-worst year of my life, but the first worst was merely crushingly sad – no rage. I used to wish I was capable of getting pissed off, but now I’d like a refund on that, thanks.

So it’s time to forget that and talk about what’s coming.

I have one official New Year’s Resolution, which is one more than I usually have: Attempt to do 90% less this year, and do the remaining 10% really well. I know – it’s a good one, right? You can totally borrow it.

That said, here’s some stuff I’d LIKE to accomplish this year:

Actually post to this blog regularly now that it’s all fresh and sparkly.

Move back to LA proper (this is almost a done deal).

I would like to start a massive cult-of-personality movement around Senator Russ Feingold. I didn’t know you could do that with politicians who weren’t dictators, but now that that glass ceiling’s been busted: This guy’s brilliant, charming, funny, handsome AND has rock-solid progressive ideals that he actually – get this – stands by. Join me?

Get a smart phone of some kind. The time has come.

Find a new job as a proofreader. I did it for years, then I did other stuff for years, and you know what? I should’ve stuck with my first idea. I’m absurdly good at it and I find it weirdly satisfying. What more can you ask from a day job?

Build a long-planned website (this is what I was test driving Joomla for) that’s a hub for information on feeding people with dietary restrictions, targeted to people who only have to do it occasionally and don’t want to stock up on specialty ingredients or become experts. The goal is to show people it’s not that big a deal; out there on the internets I’ve heard people ranting up a storm because some asshole with a severe food allergy is coming over for lunch, ya know? The holdup is that I can’t come up with a good name. My latest idea was Feeding the Masses but one hates to get too Biblical.

Oh, right: Do something about my health.

Also, I want to tell you what was cool in 2008 – shh! Really fast!

• Pushing Daisies
• Old 97’s
• Murry Hammond
• Passing Strange
• Duke Special
• Hawksley Workman
• The Magnetic Fields
• Russell Brand (video link)
• Of Montreal
• The Solipsistics
• The Greg Proops Chat Show
• Andy Prieboy

The above people and projects should, by the way, not be associated in any way with the horror that was 2008. They existed on a plane above it.

So what are you planning to be up to this year?

I’ve been cleaning out old drafts that were brought over from the MT blog; most of them were crap like “Does it show up when I do this?”

One, though, had me curious. It was entitled “The Zoo: Things I Have Learned” and began:

The first attempt to go to the zoo was on Easter Sunday. The theory was that it was a major holiday, and one that people spend with their families eating ham and disturbing “salads,” so it would be sparsely attended at best.

This was when I learned that despite having moved to California nearly 20 years ago, I still occasionally make plans based on assumptions based on my upbringing as a white chick from the Northeast. Because as it turns out, the zoo was jammed to can’t-get-near-it proportions; clearly, the hottest spot in town, followed closely by the many nearby offshoots of Griffith Park, which were packed with people who’d brought their upsetting springtime cuisine out for picnics. It looked like it’d be a lot more fun that way, actually. Semipredictable weather is a beautiful thing.

Then there was a little nubbin about how the kid who never napped DID nap, which was clearly leading to a whole big story, but didn’t.

So it’s rattling around the back of my brain now. What did I learn from not being able to go to the zoo? Was it something that would change the way I live my life? If so: Have I internalized it, or merely forgotten it?

I’ll probably never know. The lesson here: Finish your blog posts, kiddies.

Also, I’m rather happy with the phrase “upsetting springtime cuisine.”

Yesterday, my husband finished rereading Donald E. Westlake’s “What’s The Worst That Could Happen?” Saturday, I’d picked up a reissue of Westlake’s long-out-of-print “Somebody Owes Me Money,” which I started reading today.

So naturally, there’s been a lot of Westlake-related conversation around the house.

I wondered, for instance, why he doesn’t seem to be a household name. In the unfortunately segregated-in-bookstores crime-fiction genre, he’s massive, but I personally haven’t met anyone who wasn’t pretty heavily into that genre who knew who he was. Which is unfortunate, because he’s one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Unbelievably funny (you know all those internet acronyms, like Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off With Tears Rolling Down My Cheeks and Sudden Difficulty Breathing? Many of Westlake’s novels bring those to life), and with a gift for plotting that often makes whoever I read next seem as if they’re working in crayon.

And I don’t know if I said this out loud or merely thought it, but my brain definitely formed the thought, “I’m going to be incredibly bummed out when he dies.”

And my next Twitter check informed me that, in fact, he had.

Sigh.

So instead of JUST being incredibly bummed out, I thought I’d put some energy into encouraging you, if you haven’t already, to read his books. He’s written so many that it’s hard to come up with a starting place; my personal favorites, Drowned Hopes and Dancing Aztecs, are both out of print. So I’m just gonna go with: Buy the first title from the Dortmunder series you can find.

Really. You’ll thank me. I love being thanked.

RIP, Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008. You’ll be missed, sir.

Hi there! Some of you know that I’ve been wanting to move my blog to new software for some time now, causing me to be a complete slacker about the actual, you know, blogging part.

Well, three days ago I set a completely deluded deadline; I was going to have the new fringehead.com rebuilt using a totally new-to-me technology before the end of 2009.

After several days of manuals, forums and staring blankly with an attractively furrowed brow, I realized something. Just because I think that Joomla! might be a great solution for a site I’m planning later and that this will be good practice does not mean that, for this single-author blog project, I am not trying to beat a gnat to death with one of those huge clown-car hammers.

So, with hours to spare, I made a bold decision to switch horses in midstream and go with WordPress. I’ve used it, I like it, and – here’s the important part – it’s actually built for blogging. (Hey, it could be worse – I could’ve tried to build it in GarageBand.)

WP installation and configuration could not have been easier. Seriously. If you’re thinking of blogging, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

BUT.

Very, very late in the game, I realized that it had been so long since I used my old blog – from which I needed to copy all my old posts, links, etc. – that I hadn’t the first idea how to log in. I thought I remembered my username and password, I just didn’t know where to go with that information.

After an hour of searching through every suspicious file on my site from the admin side and hand-typing the URL that would theoretically lead to that file, I found it. So the problem is, in general, solved. But there’s no way I’m gonna have all this done by midnight.

So, um, welcome to the new fringehead.com. There’ll be words and stuff here soon. Pretty colors, don’t you think?

Happy New Year!

Edit: Well, look at that – once I figured out the MT stuff, this was crazy fast as well. I still have to reconstruct my blogroll though – I don’t really want you to go to Development Blog.

Tell me you don’t want to read the rest of the article that opens with this paragraph:

An ice-cream truck rolls up to the south entrance of Plummer Park on Saturday, its hi-fi speakers blasting an ethereal, toy-piano version of Beck’s “Loser.” It’s 100 degrees, but out pops a woman in a geometric, fiberglass squirrel suit. She skips over to a picnic table and joins a group of Russian men playing cards. One of the men turns and asks gruffly, in heavily accented English, “Who is this squirrel?”

(Hint: You really do.)

***

You’ve probably already seen this picture of a monkey and a pigeon. You won’t mind looking at it again, will you?

***

We went to see Joe Henry at Largo the other night, and it was utterly transcendent. I wanted to find a video that would convey the amazingness of this exact evening, this brilliant songwriter backed by a flawless band playing his new songs, some of which were so stunning you (read: I) couldn’t breathe for a minute. I didn’t find that. I did find this on YouTube, though: Henry with Billy Bragg, performing Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, and that is not too shabby either.

You should really go buy Civilians right now.

***

I usually keep my politics inside my own head, but Nerissa Nields’s long essay on the politics of food really struck a chord with me, particularly:

As I am writing this, I have the same strange mixture of anger, shame and hope that I always have when I write about the places where my desire to be a good citizen of the planet collides with my desire to be accepted as one among many fallen humans, normal people who just want to live a good life, who want to enjoy the occasional chicken McNugget and not have that moment ruined for them by a Climate Change Cassandra campaigning against junk food.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone sum up so neatly what it is that often keeps me from fully taking sides on issues I actually feel rather strongly about. So I thought I’d pass it along just in case it gives anyone else a lightning-bolt moment.

Are you familiar with jazz vocalist Carol Sloane? She’s quite delightful. Today, while researching jazz weblogs for work (nice work if you can get it), I discovered that she has a blog, and my lord, is it fabulous. She’s not the first blogger I’ve read who uses language in a wonderfully precise manner, nor the first who’s laugh-out-loud funny, but I believe she is the first who can use those qualities to relate stories about, for instance, opening for Lenny Bruce.

I got the new CD by Nerissa and Katryna Nields, Sister Holler the other day. I put it on in the car last night and – well, I should tell you I have a rule. On the first listen to a new album, I don’t allow myself to hit either the Repeat or the Skip buttons. With Repeat, on a good album, I usually have to restrain myself once or twice. On a great album, it can go as high as five or six. Sister Holler? ELEVEN. I am almost certain this has never happened before; well, probably on 69 Love Songs, but that’s hardly a reasonable comparison. (For the uninitiated: It actually contains 69 love songs.) Sister Holler consists of new songs based on existing songs, in the folk tradition – some gospel, some traditional, some pop, some classical, that sort of thing. I will almost certainly post more insightfully about the music later, but I need to completely geek out and research the original songs first. Oh yes, I’m going to full-on obsess about this album. For instance, the cover photo shows Nerissa with her face completely obscured by her hair; I may be able to find evidence that she died in 1964 and was replaced by Paul McCartney.

My, that would be geeky, wouldn’t it?

You may think you don’t want to read a blog entry about a lost teddy bear. You’d be wrong in this case; this is the single best piece of writing I’ve read in recent memory.

And finally, Julie from A Little Pregnant details a common medical procedure using props and Play-Doh. Inspired. Or maybe deranged.

Yeah, that whole we’re-moving-to-Altadena thing? Did not so much happen. We’re in Alhambra instead – bright side, it’s a much nicer (read cleaner) apartment, and it’s got some groovy midcentury fixtures I’m quite fond of. It shares a lot of the qualities that had me so smitten with Altadena (many of which I believe are completely attributable to both towns’ Route-66-adjacent location), and it’s closer to the 10 than the 210, which puts us closer to many of our favorite people and places. Hey, that’s a lot of bright side – what’s my problem? Oh. Right. We don’t know if we’ll get any of our first month’s rent back on the other place.

Anyway, we are not even remotely unpacked, and I’ve had some rather surprising/time-consuming events in my usually low-key part-time web design gig, and W. went through an extremely unpleasant phase that I blame on his being almost 3 in general, his making some major developmental leaps, and then that whole moving for the second time in six months issue. But today he was back to his charming self, and even allowed several boxes to be unpacked without ugly incident, lovely child.

I realize this is the least entertaining entry ever, and I do apologize – this one’s just for the people who check in for the facts. More soon!