If Someone Asks, This Is Where I'll Be

In the meantime, feel free to peruse the past five years and five days worth of posts. They're about my life, but I made it entertaining as possible.

If Someone Asks, This Is Where I'll Be

Ask Me Anything! Spring Edition

Being I had such a great time with the last Ask Me Anything post, I thought I'd try it again.

ASK ME ANYTHING!

Ask Me Anything! Spring Edition

Julie, Julia, and the Twilight Zone

What blogger couldn't weigh in on the movie of the book of the blog, Julie & Julia, about the woman who was already an awesome cook and writer but was stuck working at the Freedom Hole hotline because no one can just do what they love and be happy without money, until one day Julia Child appears in her cupboard and possesses her, making her chop up all the haters, sparing the too-good-to-be-true husbands and amazingly well-trained cat?

ME! I saw the movie a while back, with Nan and Mum--who loved it, because they love food, and I can't critique the movie, because for a movie about women bonding over food it wasn't bad and I don't like picking apart other people's work because that's fucking lame, so I thought I'd fire off a list of things I learned about myself from the movie.

One, I am apparently a man. A man who hates food. An anorexic man, even, because after two hours of watching people have orgasms over food--and yeah, Julia Child made out with her husband, I just...you need to know that, not that I had a problem with that, or Adam Lambert's AMA performance for that matter--I was just feeling a bit like I'd had a really bad migraine.

Maybe that's because I had a migraine. See, I had just gotten into playing Café World on Facebook, not because I like food or anything, but...it's Facebook, you understand, and I use Facebook ironically, and I have migraines, and doing anything online for more than the minute it takes to play Bejeweled Blitz makes me start acting like all those people in The Happening just before they step in front of a combine harvester. I smell in algebra!

Anyway, I'd been doing fine serving bacon cheeseburgers--and I'm a vegetarian, remember (not many people do, because I don't shove it down everyone's throat)--but I'd staggered off to take Excedrin and my caramel apples went bad before I could serve them and my rating tanked and all the computer people weren't giving me coins anymore and after that maybe I didn't want to see two hours of a Nora Ephron film about food. Although the occasional up yours to Sen. McCarthy was beautiful. The killing of the lobster might have negated that, had I been in the room, but I walked out. I came back, I always do. I didn't walk out on Orphan, mind you. Orphan kicks ass. See it. You'll know when to look away.

Afterwards, The Trade-Ins episode of The Twilight Zone was on, and I couldn't stop staring at the old dude's powdered eyelashes, so maybe I was just being '80s-level picky that night.

This is not a reflection at all on the movie or the blog or the books or food in general, really. There was a meme on Facebook, again I don't know why I did it, and it told me I was a spork because I chose Julia Child as the person I'd most want to sit and listen to. Sinatra was on the list, loads of people were on the list, but I figured Julia Child would have good stories and not be all that dangerous and/or likely to make me want to hang myself afterward. I've since read Julie Powell's blog too and it's fabulous. So I guess I just get diabetes from Nora Ephron films, that's all. Sure. It's me. Me, me, me.

OH YEAH, speaking of me, blogs didn't have pop-up windows like, "YOU HAVE A COMMENT!" in 2002 and they still don't (thank god). Call me picky, but War Games prevented me from getting a modem until I was 16. I had a modem, in the house, when I was 12, and it had to go back to Games 'n' Gadgets, unopened, because of its untapped lethalness. So yes, I have an issue about movies misrepresenting the common everyday computer.

But you know what? That whole Julie/Julia story is an up yours to fear and that I can get behind 100%.

Even if I can't look directly at cream sauce without puking. Or aspic. Or raw poultry. Or fish. Or--okay, I'm physically incapable of puking in real life due to my hernia, so don't worry that I'm off puking somewhere. Anorexia's nothing to make fun of. But puke jokes always amused me, because as I've pointed out earlier in this post, I seem to be a very weird boy.

---

Nevermind that, Hey Pais has a much better take on Julie & Julia.

Julie, Julia, and the Twilight Zone

The Racket: A Letter I Ought To Have Sent Myself

Congratulations, you got born. Odds are you won't find that or the next few months half as interesting as anything else ever, but be assured you began to cost your family money from the second your cells began dividing.

After the thousands spent to keep you from from starving or staining the furniture, you'll get shipped off to a place where you will instantly learn you're not all that. Seriously, there's billions of things just like you milling around this planet and at this point you'll be no better or worse than any other, so be nice and focus on learning to read and write and add because beyond that there really is nothing you can't learn on your own. Sure, it helps to have someone to tell you what the hell nuclear fusion is about, but for the most part if you're capable of thinking for yourself you'll figure it out eventually.

Don't bother trying to start out being some fancy thing that won't make you loads of money, because the first thing potential mates will ever care about is whether you're going to need them to pay for things like bandages or cereal. After you've made your money then you can go be as weird as you want and people will love you.

Don't get injured or otherwise sick. No one cares. Unless you have money to put into the healthcare system, then it will take all of that money to figure out just what the hell is wrong with you. Nine times out of ten no one will ever know what the hell is wrong with you.

You probably can't live in a tent, someone will kill you or you'll freeze. But they're much cheaper than those things that stand on land and tend to be eaten away by insects and the elements.

As you get older, make sure you have interests of your own, because your friends are going to get annoying and your children--if you've managed to pull off that part of the game--will be off oiling the cogs of the great machine in ways they think you didn't. If you're lucky you'll have someone you can stand that can also stand you and you can make fun of everyone else together. If not, animal shelters are busting at the seams with instant love on legs.

Don't waste time thinking about death. You'll get there eventually and it doesn't matter how. The important thing is that you manage to make everyone incredibly sad when you go and one way to do that is to be awesome. Not loaded with money, because money is not being awesome. Have some interesting stories to tell, know something worth passing on, if it's really good they'll remember it. Unless you've chosen the wrong people to tell your stories to, but that's just a general failure of judgment on everyone's part. Some people don't belong together, and it's better to recognize that before the stabbings.



Use well what you learn.

The Racket: A Letter I Ought To Have Sent Myself

Cookies That Don't Cause Itching and More!

My cousin-in-law-in-law has started a blog about what inspires her, everything from design to her son and gluten-free cookie recipes. The cookies are very inspiring and I think that's why I'm featuring the blog.

FRESH beckett. Read and enjoy.

Cookies That Don't Cause Itching and More!

Speaking of Tags....

Every post in this blog is now properly tagged. There's a little tag cloud on the page and everything, so the posts can be perused according to the overall subject.

Yes, it took a while. You're welcome.

Speaking of Tags....

I Love The Smell Of Marker In The Morning

I got tagged today. No, really, I was walking down the street and a guy came up to me with a Sharpie, and wrote something on my head. When I tried to protest that he was invading my personal space, he wrote something else.

When I stopped off for coffee, I saw the markings of my ink-happy assailant on the barista and several of the patrons.

GRUMPY was scrawled on the boy who handed me a cup of latte. PIMPLES was also written across his cheek. I thought it best not to ask him to read my tags in case he wanted me to reciprocate.

I couldn't find anyone with less insulting tags, so I looked in the side mirror of a car that had ROAD-HOGGING DEATH MACHINE spray-painted on it and saw what the psycho thought of me.

It read ETTENURB in block letters. Not even a note of my new blonde highlights! Dismayed, I saw I'd been given a mustache of ink, which appeared to spell out YSOIN.

Ysoin? I'll give him Ysoin!

I Love The Smell Of Marker In The Morning

One Year Of Awesome

Thank you, President Obama, for encouraging everyone to get a mop, and for not quitting once you saw the mess you were handed.

One Year Of Awesome

Back That Thing Up

Did you know Blogger blogs can now be exported?

Say...for backup purposes?

Yes.

http://draft.blogger.com/ is some sort of alternate-reality Blogger dashboard where you can click on Settings, then right there at the top of the screen on the basic tab are options to import, export or (*gasp*) delete your blog.

You get an xml file, with everything--comments, layout, EVERYTHING (she says in her best Gary Oldman). The file can even be imported into other blogs, which is the kind of spiffiness I would have liked eight years ago. In my day, you had to save these things POST BY POST.

I backed up this blog, and it was easy. This entire blog comes in under 5MB. Wow.  Such a drop in the digital bucket.

Back That Thing Up

In In Ur Studio, Answerin Ur Questions

In response to my earlier Ask Me Anything post, I got a question from Twitter buddy and fellow Bronxite Sean (aka Jersey2Bronx) who played James Lipton and asked the 10 questions I've both avoided and answered in the past, depending on the direction of the wind.

I forget my old answers so here are 10 fresh answers for 2010!

1. What is your favorite word?

Outtie!

2. What is your least favorite word?

Heatwave.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Clear skies and music.

4. What turns you off?

Close-mindedness.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

Martha's bucket!

6. What sound or noise do you love?

Pawpads coming toward me.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Suffering.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Construction.

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Politician.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"The pool table's over there, under all the cats, where the dogs are sleeping."

Thanks Sean (aka Jersey2Bronx), hope these weren't too vanilla!

In In Ur Studio, Answerin Ur Questions

Ask Me Anything!

Yes, that's right, I'm tired of all the thankless thinking and writing, I want to hear from you!

It's a new year, and I have only two posts scheduled. So ask away! I'll put the questions and answers in a post as they come in and I answer them. The really good questions may get posts with long answers all to themselves!

It can be about anything, hence the word anything in the subject line.

INTERACTION TIME ENGAGE!

Ask Me Anything!

According to the Gregorian Calendar, It's A New Year.

According to the Gregorian Calendar, It's A New Year.

29 Songs I Spent Good Times With in 2009

Yes, yes, it's New Year's Eve and you don't care what music I listened to this year, especially once it gets late and I mention my unyielding love for Lady GaGa, but I'm going to sit in the corner with a fever that makes me seem drunk and tell you anyway. You've sat through 52 songs that take me back to other years, you can sit through 29 more songs that will always take me back to the year that I took control of my brain and had a good time even while half dead.

From what I remember, my favorite albums from the time they were released until now include Ellipse by Imogen Heap, Middle Cyclone by Neko Case, U2's No Line On The Horizon, Time Flies When You're Having Fun by Smokey Robinson, The List by Rosanne Cash, Brendan Benson's solo album My Old, Familiar Friend, Between My Head And The Sky by Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, the Moby album Wait For Me, Up From Below by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and the new Nitzer Ebb album ICP.

But the albums will take too long to play for you tonight! Onto the songs! Clicking the titles will take you to the videos if you want to spend the rest of this year watching music videos...not that there's anything wrong with that. *ahem* Some of them are really worth a view or ten.

This, kids, was 2009 in my ears:

We Are Here To Tell You - Duncan Sheik

Fits and Dizzy Spells - Andrew Bird

People Got A Lot Of Nerve - Neko Case

Wrong - Depeche Mode

Magnificent - U2

Fuck You (Very, Very Much) - Lily Allen

Happy Up Here - Röyksopp

Furr - Blitzen Trapper

Daniel - Bat For Lashes

Strange Overtones - David Byrne and Brian Eno

Sounds Like The Devil - Shemekia Copeland

So Human - Lady Sovereign

Sober - P!nk

San Francisco - Jill Sobule

Funny The Way It Is - Dave Matthews Band

Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective

Pale Horses - Moby

Fire Burning - Sean Kingston

First Train Home - Imogen Heap

Animal - Miike Snow

Fireflies - Owl City

Never Forget You - Noisettes

Uprising - Muse

Sea Of Heartbreak - Rosanne Cash with Bruce Springsteen and Jeff Tweedy

God Help The Girl - God Help The Girl

Just Breathe - Pearl Jam

Foot Of The Mountain - a-ha

Whataya Want From Me - Adam Lambert

Garbage Day - Brendan Benson

Buster Voodoo - Rodrigo y Gabriela

There you go. Is that all? Hell no, I had to mercilessly prune this list to get to 29 and even then cheated with the tangent about the albums. Will I remember these songs in 25 years? I'll bet that I will. If I'm alive in 25 years. ...I'm not starting that again. I enjoyed listening to these this year, and when I hear them again, I'll enjoy them again. And again.

Happy future everyone, it'll be here in a few hours calling itself 2010. Don't waste it, and in the words of the great Guy David (who I also listened to a lot this year), may you never have to listen to music you don't like.

29 Songs I Spent Good Times With in 2009

Tuesdays With Mopey

You know...I don't think I'm going to post so much next year. Who knows, maybe my mind will change in a few days, but I'm guessing not. This is no sudden decision, in fact I decided a long time ago that maybe this wasn't where I wanted the majority of my words to go.

The blog's not going away, but to be very honest it's been a pain in the alt+shift to come up with posts every Tuesday. Perhaps you've seen some of them and wondered why I chose to share all I shared. Perhaps you haven't seen them at all. There are an awful lot of posts with no comments, I have to wonder if they've all been read, and even then, have they changed anyone's life for the better? No sense taking my time to write something and have it not read--or worse, half-read and misunderstood. That's so 1997.

So after my next post, the epic top 29 of 2009, which will run as usual on New Year's Eve...I may be a bit...er...missing.

I'll be happily frolicking in the snow, enjoying life with my loved ones while listening to music and checking out the sky, most likely.

Don't be sad, I'll bring lots of stories back with me.

Tuesdays With Mopey

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Do They Know It's Christmas

Is music a gift?

Yes.

Can music save a life?

Yes. It helped save mine.

Can it save lots and lots of lives?

Back when people still bought albums it did!

When I first heard Do They Know It's Christmas? by the collection of adorable British musicians (plus Kool & The Gang!) known as Band-Aid, all I knew was that it was awesome.

Being I didn't have access to the fascinating Wikipedia article about the recording of the song, I had watch the video over and over to note every singer involved. Some of them I wouldn't know for a while, being I was only at the beginning of my obsession with pop music, but by now I can pretty much run the song through my head frame by frame and point out even the non-Kemp members of Spandau Ballet. I wish Midge Ure's vocal was available to listen to. I....

This song was meant to draw attention to the famine in Ethiopia. Brilliant plan, using cute Brits to get the issue noticed. It was the first time I really heard Bono, I guess, and when he growled, "Tonight thank god it's them instead of you," I became very guilty about the ridiculous amounts of food we had for the holidays. Kids were starving in Africa, kids are still starving somewhere to this day, and that Bob Geldof and Midge Ure got all that talent together to do something about something they wanted to change impressed me so much I experienced feelings.

With that, we have reached the end of the soul-bearing. That's all there is, there is no more. I've written it all down and now it belongs to another time.

As for me, I'm off to save the future. The nights are getting shorter already.

Happy future, everyone.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Do They Know It's Christmas

When Ho-Ho-Ho Met Po-Po

An idea for a 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge story fell from the sky onto my head like a face-hugging alien that wanted to go do some good in the world but as all misunderstood things find out, sneaking around dressed funny is frowned upon in modern culture. I DON'T KNOW WHY.

The theme for the challenge was Hat, and this is what I pulled out:

One December, I forget how long ago, a hat fell from the sky, right in front of me. It was one of those freaky red and white ones the guys at the mall wear when they get sadistic and want to be peed on by hysterical kids.

At first I was worried a bunch of reindeer poop was going to follow, but it never did.

I didn't know what to do with the hat, so I took it home and now every year I wear it while sneaking into kid's rooms to give them books and coats. I get arrested.

The whole hat rack is here for your head-hugging entertainment.

Have a good one, kids. Never lose the wonder.

When Ho-Ho-Ho Met Po-Po

10

The first project for this blog in 2009 had me aiming a camera at myself and talking, like people on YouTube. Then, as with most things, I had the sense to realize a weekly vlog wasn't for me and took a break. I had a lot of fun with the vlogs, though, and don't even regret the box fight in the basement.

When spring rolled around, very bad things happened on the day I was meant to be all, "YAY, SPRING!" so instead of bringing everyone down I switched gears and made the vlog a seasonal review of what the cats and dog were up to, and what the backyard looked like along the way. Now it's winter. The tenth vlog rings in 2010, with footage from before the recent snowstorm, and then the traditional pan around the yard happens not once but more than once so everyone can see that yes, it snowed. A lot. There's more. You should watch it.

10

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Ordinary World

Do I need to explain what drew me to Ordinary World by Duran Duran? Really? Have you heard this song?

I adopted my border collie on a rainy Thursday in 1995, two days after the death of my first dog, that's one thing.

I requested this song on the radio in 1994 before heading off on my first driving lesson, and it played just as I left the house.

I voted for it on Christmas Eve 1993, when it became a Shreeek of the Week on WDRE, two years after the Enya song Caribbean Blue.

Every time I hear it since then I don't feel like so much of a freak, and I know I'm not the only one with entire worlds in my head that exist only for me, and I remember not to fear today or forget tomorrow, and I wish I could get the message back to me in 1993. Then again, maybe I just did.

Should I bother giving a flashing warning to the video? I'm the only one that bothers, right? Maybe won't mind it at all right now.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Ordinary World

Why I Shouldn't Podcast

I'm editing my final 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge (of 2009), and this happened:

Listen to Lynda N. - Why I Can't Podcast

This is what it's like sometimes. The rest of the time it's like Nell, but played by Jack Klugman.

Why I Shouldn't Podcast

My New Calendar Can Be Your Calendar!

Do you like flowers? Do you like knowing what day it is? I have just the thing!

12 of the most delectable bee-approved flowers in my world have decided they want to spend the new year with you!

Sound familiar? Good, you're not losing your mind! I created another calendar using Zazzle and am selling it here!

I highly recommend Zazzle for all calendar creation needs, really. Unless you've got your own fancy calendar factory.

And yes, the photos will be available as separate prints in Etsy soon, but think about it, you won't know what day it is looking at the prints, and they'll sell for more than $1.70. That's what it breaks down to, 12 of my flashy flowers photos--13 if you count the cover--at $1.70 each.

It's a steal!

(Is that better marketing than this? I think it is. Sure it is.)

My New Calendar Can Be Your Calendar!