Things I Can't Believe Exist.

What a time to be alive. There is a grill--a small one, mind you--that has the ability to play MP3s.

MEAT AND MUSIC. Not entirely my thing, but wow. Gone are the days of having a radio sitting on the table taking up all that space that could be used for the potato salad, no, now there are 10-watt speakers inside of a George Foreman grill.

As a child, before my first boombox, Nan would pile her Barbra Streisand albums into the 6-foot long, 4-foot-high, 8-Track capable stereo upstairs in the living room and crank that baby up loud enough that we could hear it in not only the backyard, but Connecticut. To this day every time I smell a barbecue I can hear Guilty. (This was back before my intestines rebelled against 80% of the things I ate so that's one of my good memories. I know it may be hard to tell for some of you kids who don't get how fantastic an album Guilty really is. I'm not even playing with the title and saying I had nothing to be guilty of, eating a cheeseburger, really.)

As good an idea as this may seem, I don't understand how the wiring of the 10-watt speaker inside the MP3 grill doesn't get damaged by the searing heat of grillin'. Not only that, I mean, there's a plug for an MP3 player. Like, you have to plug your player into the barbecue. Think about this. Think about the ways this could go wrong. iPods aren't cheap, and I've heard rebuilding a library in one is like trying to reconstruct your ex out of Lego. To each their own.

The Tupperware boombox seems safer to me, somehow. Not that I'll be trying that any time soon as I wear my music on my head and since the time that I played my tape of Frank's Wild Years I tend not to try exposing my family to new music at dinner.

Here is some dinner music for your weekend by Barbra and Barry and Tom Waits, your results may vary.

Things I Can't Believe Exist.

A Peanut Butter Cup For My Ears

This comes from my sister-in-Tom-Waits-love over on LJ, who also turned me onto Bukowski last year, and that I missed out on this when she first posted it was a disservice to myself, but I'm making up for it by showing it to everyone. (If you're on dial-up at least read the words, and then go listen to some Tom. His reading voice is actually quite calming.)

Check out this video: tom reads hank



(I have been working extra hard, and when I'm all done and caught up I will share highlights. None of the highlights involve me going on a Speed Racer-fueled nekkid rampage through the Botanical Garden, however, so don't get your hopes up. Yet.)

A Peanut Butter Cup For My Ears

Give Me A Pill That Makes Me Slur.

I'm feeling very honest at the moment, and that never ends well for me, but that is the consequence of listening to the Bryan Ferry song from Legend too much. I get migraines, and part of the glory that is a migraine--for me--is that my jaw gets very stiff and it appears to people who don't know me very well--like for three decades--that I am having some sort of stroke or drug overdose. This always amuses me a few days later.

One thing I found to be useful after a night of banging my head on the keyboard to get relief was an article that describes a device that goes between the front teeth and can reduce jaw stiffness or something, I don't remember what I read by now because the lightning, it is in my head.

Seeing as I'm uninsured and unable to find a dentist willing to work at 2AM in exchange for say, a nice lemon pie and a few bootlegged B-movies, I looked at the one thing I knew would bring relief. My trusty little happy face pencil. Except instead of using it to stab myself through the temple, I put it in between my front teeth. Oh, if my family could see me now, never mind drug overdoses, I'm gonna die from the lead poisoning!

No, you know, I think these pencils were made in China, and a lot of the paint has been gnawed off over the past few months. Not to mention that I've been wary of putting the pencil in my mouth the past few migraines because I dropped it in the yard the other day while I was drawing, and you know, ants breed out there.

The thing that amuses me even more than being told I need medical attention is being told that the Excedrin Migraine that I take once I notice my elaborate aura is what is causing me to slur. Personally, I see no reason to take pills to give me slurs. I am not that emo. And God knows I am emo, but no, HGTV or the occasional Tony Scott film and the big ass hunk of chocolate cream pie (which was fabulous BTW, damn it) possibly maybe coupled with the 9000% humidity, decongestant withdrawal, and psychotic hormones out to remind me I am a woman maybe sorta are all things that are higher on the slur-causing list that a puny single dose of an over-the-counter aspirin/Tylenol/caffeine "preventative."

I totally have taken one aspirin, one Tylenol, and a cup of coffee to fashion my own version of this thing in the past out of desperation. No research has been done on one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer, but I'm guessing if I tried that the migraine would be the least of my problems. Being arrested for public nakedness with disfiguring hives, maybe, but then I'd really have some hardcore trouble to talk about at family gatherings.

Because honestly, crawling away to chew on a pencil (even if it did fall on the ground) and taking two weeny little Rite-Aid Excedrin knock-offs only when the pain gets so horrendous I think trepanation with a Swiss army knife might work is small time.

Which reminds me, I saw the Tom Waits movie Big Time, and it made me want to live another day. Which is kinda sad, because the next day I got this blasted migraine. HAHA, I kid. There are three days out of a month when I don't feel like I'm either going to die or kill for some reason, and after 25 years I've pretty much realized that no amount of happiness pumped into my eyes and ears changes that (although I'm not turning down a nice loud Level 42 song in my ear right now), but I'm used to it. I wish everyone else were. I mean, it's not like I block doorways.

Give Me A Pill That Makes Me Slur.

A musical present for you (and you know who you are).

So I found this copy of the Toad The Wet Sprocket song, Walk On The Ocean on an old CD of mine, and I don't know what to do with it....*coughing fit* I don't want to meet any of the nice feds who circle my house in their helicopters this week, as I am out of tea biscuits and would nave nothing to feed them.

Instead, here's a Tom Waits video.

A musical present for you (and you know who you are).

Having just blown my last $5 on Anthony Daniels, I ceased raking and started writing.

Surprisingly, I managed to remember that Arrested Development was on tonight, and so that is why I am sitting at my desk. In a few minutes, I'll be running down the stairs because I forgot to set up the tape for Coffee & Cigarettes, which starts at 9:35 on Sundance. Tom Waits is in the movie, and that is why I must see it.

The commercials during Arrested Development are weird tonight. I count 5 billion spiders and one "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the chicken."

That last one brings to mind visions far odder than those in the commercial itself, but we're dealing with ad execs that consider "pin-ups" in a firehouse to be other firemen. The Maxwell House commercial where they bastardize Madnesseses Our House? Tragic. Pin-ups are scantily clad women (or I guess men, y'know, whatever)...never forget that. *sniffle*

Having just blown my last $5 on Anthony Daniels, I ceased raking and started writing.