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On Attending an Auction of Props for Your Favorite TV Show
Posted 8:44 AM, May 31, 2006 |
In the first lot was Angela’s wedding veil,
complete with the wine stain shaped
like an Eastern European country.
Seeing the veil on the white,
featureless mannequin head was like
seeing your first grade teacher at the supermarket.
Items lined up next to the auctioneer,
his voice that of a television commercial narrator
reading disclaimers. The last six seasons of your
favorite TV show replayed on random,
like catching the occasional rerun on cable,
out of order, leaving you to try to remember
if Stephen was Terry’s best friend before or after
they sent Jordan to the hospital by firing a potato
gun at her car.
Just for a moment, you thought you saw
Sam Elliot leaning against the door in the back,
placing a bid for the eyepatch he donned
after getting a plate thrown at him
by Marion. In your first glance,
his left cheek still seemed bruised and his eye,
milky and opaque, seemed like an alien.
In your second glance, Sam Elliot
had vanished, and you could never
quite tell when you saw him on talk shows in later years,
his right side always facing the camera, existing half
in your television and half in the back of the auction
room, itself like a television set opened and its contents
spilled across the room, odd and disorganized.
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Memorial Day Parade
Posted 8:06 AM, May 29, 2006 |
Taken at the local Memorial Day parade down the street yesterday:
Fire truck E19.
A gorgeous classic Corvette.
One of two antique cars.
The second of two.
Classic police cruiser. Check out the police hats. I would love to own one of those.
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Go, Getty, Go!
Posted 12:41 PM, May 27, 2006 |
All taken at a recent trip to the Getty Center. ‘Twas cloudy, so no skyline pictures, etc., and unfortunately the white stone matched the sky, so no real good shots with contrast. But anyway.
Fountain, building (East Pavilion?)
The Getty has terrific gardens, especially the well-groomed hedge.
Some white flowers and buds, still waiting to bloom.
Yellow tuberose flowers, I believe.
A group of trees, perfectly aligned.
One step to the right.
Green grass, building, steam.
Girl in red.
Not at the Getty Center, but rather at the bus stop.
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Reflections on a Day Well-Lived
Posted 10:13 PM, May 25, 2006 |
And so I usually sit, head down, just before going to sleep, and reflect on the day’s activities. Today, I’m going to share those reflections with you.
First, a good visit to the beach. I laid out and caught some wicked rays. Actually, I just read an article about ornithology in The New Yorker. But it was a bitching article.
Second, a bowling extravaganza. Good times. I bowled decently, and paid $1.75 afterwards for a 20-oz. Wild Cherry Pepsi that I drank with measurable vigor.
Third, Taco Bell taste testing! Two chalupas, two caramel apple empanadas. Four products. Twenty-five dollars. And, I’ll have you know, I plan on spending each and every one of those dollars at Taco Bell. Yes, they have invested wisely in this little consumer. I have been begging for 27 years for a company to come along and make me their puppet, their little commercial marionette.
And lastly, a good rerun of The Office.
Yes, a day well-lived.
PS. I love chihuahuas. You can all take that to the bank.
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Update This
Posted 9:22 PM, May 24, 2006 |
Okay, so here’s the scoop. Comments are up and running. You have to register with TypeKey first. Registering with TypeKey is quick and painless, free, no spam, no worries. It’ll let you leave comments here and at a number of other quality websites. It’s the best way for me to avoid spam.
If you notice any glitches with the comment function, let me know. (I already know the comment posting action is not the quickest thing around. Sigh. If making it quicker wouldn’t take another 20 hours, I’d do it. As it is, I’m saving 20 hours for the few seconds you’re sitting there, so I’m calling it a wash.)
Also, I exported all the entries from one of my old blogs, To Whom It May Concern (which is no more). That’s the blog on which I was writing letters to businesses and getting free stuff. So all the entries are in the archives, but some of the graphics, etc., have been removed.
Also, I added some info to the sidebar, namely the number of entries in each monthly archive, and I took some information away, namely the Minneapolis show schedule. I also worked on the category archives (poetry, current read, current listen) and ended up moving those around a little to make the comments a tad bit quicker to reload. If you bookmarked any of those pages — nevermind.
The sidebar will continue to change in the next couple of days as I go through the link list and update it. Also, the sidebar is really only functional on the main page - when all the updates on the sidebar are done, I’ll spread it across the rest of the site, but it’s a little time-consuming, so I want to make sure I get it right the first time.
For those of you with newsreaders, this site has a feed as well. Here.
If you’re bored by all of this, hang tight. I’ll get you more California details soon enough. And also, in the meantime, as if I’m not spending enough time on this website, here’s a new one for you.
See you on the flip side.
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Comments Available
Posted 8:36 PM, May 21, 2006 |
Update: Comments are now not working. They were, and then I went back to try to put some sort of Typekey-registration on, and I’m close, but not there yet, and I’m not going backwards. So hang on.
Comments are now working - to leave one, click on the “Comments” link below the title, and then enter in your comment. For now, anyone can leave comments, but so help me, if you leave a comment about increasing the size of my hoo-haw, this will happen (or I’ll have to figure out how to make comments available only to specified users, via Typekey, etc., but I don’t have the time or patience to mess with that tonight.)
At long last.
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If This Were Your Home Page, You’d Be Home Now
Posted 12:44 AM, May 21, 2006 |
Yesterday morning: attended the Arrested Development estate sale, at which they were selling the vast majority of the props accumulated during the show. For sale were the caskets used for George Bluth’s “burial,” GOB’s saw-the-person-in-half box, and the Aztec Tomb, which sold for a reported $450. And a lot of junk. Oh, also a sign for the Milford Academy.
Yesterday evening: attended the 10th anniversary showing of Swingers (much funnier and better than I remembered), followed by a question-and-answer session with Jon Favreau.
Tonight: Ima Robot show down by the Queen Mary.
The Queen Mary
More photos to come, and a poem, and maybe comments, and a chicken, and an antique toaster oven, and a hangnail. And a starfruit.
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Making a Go Of It at Grover Cleveland
Posted 6:14 PM, May 18, 2006 |
As promised, here are a few photos of the living room. It’s the most exciting room. Forgive the fact that there is a big, clunky television on the floor, as well as some stereo equipment and enough wires to string up a congregation’s worth of ducks in a good duck hunting season.
The shelves, newly installed, and the corner recliner chair, sans ottoman, but plus dramatic, artifical lighting.
That chair again, but bonus dramatic lighting.
The living room from the other direction, with shelves, modern couch (custom made (but not for us)), and giant Gerhard Richter print.
Everyone should own a giant Richter print, by the way. It’s essential.
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Your Sexy Murakami News
Posted 10:11 AM, May 17, 2006 |
Anyone that’s been reading this blog for a while should know that I’m a huge Haruki Murakami fan. (He’s got a great website (well, actually, Random House does, for him) here.)
I never thought that Murakami’s books are sexy, but apparently what do I know? Playboy thinks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is, right up there with Lolita, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Tropic of Cancer.
I just read it for the articles.
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Photos: Go West Young Man
Posted 7:00 PM, May 15, 2006 |
The place is shaping up. I was going to post photos of the place, but that will have to wait, as it just now occurs to me that I haven’t even posted photos of the drive. Here’s that set of photos - photos of the place and more details to follow, as always.
Taken somewhere in Nebraska, where the sky is the most interesting thing around, sadly.
Snowy trees in Colorado.
The mountains. You know. The Rockies.
Mountain, railway, river, all in Colorado.
A river at a rest area, just past the Rockies.
Rock formations looming over the road in Utah.
Rock formations + lens flare = brilliance?
Woefully, Nevada and California did not make the photo tour. California will, soon, of course, but Nevada, well… Probably not.
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Furniture, Come Hither
Posted 7:30 PM, May 13, 2006 |
Today, a nice, round, blue kitchen table with four metal/leather (faux?) chairs entered our lives, along with a tidy little computer desk that is the cat’s meow. Actually, the cat’s meow was apparently the table, since the original owner’s cat kept jumping onto it and then strolling around like he owned the place.
Bottom line: all the purchases were quite nice. Also, washed the defroster car down in Hermosa Beach after picking up the desk. The defroster car is much happier. Also, stopped at Target (represent, TC) and Ralph’s. And Fry’s Electronics. And some lady’s Anaheim Angels / Minnesota Twins tickets for the end of the month (represent, TC).
Photographs are getting closer, now that the computer has a desk, etc.
Stay out of the rain.
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Undoing
Posted 9:27 AM, May 13, 2006 |
All of our possessions arrived yesterday. The shipping container we rented showed up, and only a couple boxes had actually fallen open during transit. Other contents had shifted, but we’ve yet to find anything that’s broken or irreparably damaged, other than sheets and blankets that we wrapped things in to ship them. Pretty good.
We’re now in the stage where we undo everything we did in the last two weeks, namely unpacking. Then, furniture must be purchased. Then, we must figure out how to get it here.
If you haven’t moved recently, I don’t recommend it.
Also, our beautiful new LCD television arrived with a crack in the LCD part of it. Not much good. So we’re waiting for a FedEx return slip to get to us, I think, then shipping it back, then getting a new one shipped to us, etc.
We did get cable internet and then I set up our wireless router, so we’re running a little wireless network around the house here. Of course, my computer is still sitting on the floor, and I’m typing this post while sitting on my foot, which is now asleep.
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Clever Title Here
Posted 10:41 PM, May 11, 2006 |
I was trying to come up with a clever title, but gave up, throwing out such ideas as “The Eagle Has Landed,” “Final Destination 3,” and “I’m Where? How Long Was I Asleep?” although, if forced to pick one, the last one gets the nod.
This will be brief, but my driving companion and I have arrived here in lovely Los Angeles, having to sit in traffic only a tiny bit as my knee throbbed, one throb for each of the approximately 28 hours we spent in our cars in the last three days.
States visited: Minnesota, Iowa, boredom, Nebraska, sheer boredom, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and now California. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 8 real states, 2 fake states, and now I’m entering one new state of mind, that of bliss, beach sand, and beautiful sun.
There will be photos.
Oh, and also, somewhere in Nebraska, I bought a ham and cheese sandwich, but the ham was frozen, little ice crystals and all. But I was hungry. But I didn’t have a microwave. So of course, not having access to a defroster in a microwave, I just put the sandwich on the dash and used my $20,000+ defroster that I bought a couple years ago. If only my $50 microwave could have driven 2,000 miles.
More to come as things get settled here.
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Fiction: Searching for the Cure
Posted 6:54 PM, May 6, 2006 |
 ‘It’s cold in here,’ I said to the single light bulb humming overhead. The concrete bricks and mortar of the basement sat silently, their gray reveling in the chilled air. I could hear the floor directly above me creak; my brother was walking around again. I could hear the footstep of his right foot, then the long, slow drag of his left foot. Step, drag, step, drag. Drag with a long ‘a’.
The left side of my brother’s body stopped working, mysteriously, about six months ago. He’s been dragging himself around the house ever since.
Step.
I’m in the basement, looking for the cure.
Drag.
The light bulb wavers slowly above me, the metal pullcord like a bunch of ant bodies strung together, all hard shells and creepy, shiny, and round. The cord clinks against the bulb every step.
Step. Clink. Drag. Step. Clink. And so on.
Along the north wall – the cold wall, as I pull my hand back, as if I had dipped it into winter two months early – sits four long, metal shelves, all painted green, holding jar after jar of homemade spaghetti sauce. The red of the sauce looks almost black in the corner, the light barely reaching. I pick up one jar and turn it over in my hand.
Drag. Step.
I almost drop the jar on the concrete floor; a small face is pressed against the inside of the jar, its head distended, two eyes looking out.
On second glance, it’s a mushroom, a small mushroom, not a distorted face preserved in tomato sauce.
I do drop the sauce when I hear my brother’s drag-step rhythm from upstairs interrupted by a thud, the breaking of glass, and what sounds like the grandfather clock falling on the floor. The echo in the basement is stupendous, and I leave spaghetti-sauce footprints on every other step. They dry in the dim light and, if you look closely, you can still see them today, on tours of the house. The tour guide won’t tell you about them, but I’m telling you that I’m a size seven and that it really isn’t blood; it’s spaghetti sauce.
You can believe whatever you want.
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Unemployment Starts Here
Posted 4:38 PM, May 5, 2006 |
Well, I’m now officially unemployed. Terrific. I can’t remember the last time I was unemployed, really.
It’s strangely saddening and freeing. It’s weird knowing that the only things I have to do for the next couple weeks, basically, are things that I want to do. Nobody is going to make me do anything I don’t want to do.
It’s also strange that I’ll be leaving all my co-workers behind. It’s like when you go to high school with someone, really - I worked at my job for 3.5 years, so some people I’ve known for that long, which is longer than your average high school student (we didn’t get summer vacations). Time just piles up, like snow falling on a pine tree. Eventually, the weight of the snow bends the tree enough, the branch dumps its snow, and it starts over. So that’s what I’m going to do, slowly start over, eventually find another pine branch on which to collect a quiet snowfall.
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IndieKarma
Posted 1:48 PM, May 5, 2006 |
Jason Kottke linked to IndieKarma, which seems like a good idea. I have no problem supporting sites I visit frequently, whether it’s by paying subscriptions or buying the occasional piece of merchandise (t-shirts, pint glasses, shot glasses, custom-made vodka, brandy snifters, and so on). And so I’m all for IndieKarma.
Basically, for website owners who sign up with IndieKarma (sign-up is free), a small piece of code displays a non-intrusive, customizable banner at the bottom of their website. Users can click on this banner, then login to their own, personal IndieKarma account (which is free, and right now signup gets you a free $1) and then a penny is donated to the owner of the website. One penny, one visit. (And, once you log in to your IndieKarma account, you remain logged in, even if you quit your browser and restart it, etc., unless you specifically click “Logout.” Nice, convenient, easy, and all in the background.)
Do I think this idea will catch on? Probably not. But it’d be nice - I don’t expect to make tons of money this way - barely any, most likely, but if I’m going to use it as a web-surfer, which I am, I may as well use it as a blogger, even though I shudder at that term.
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Photos: Palm Springs & Coachella 2006
Posted 9:47 PM, May 2, 2006 |
As promised:
Some nicely pruned trees.
Orange tree and an old car in the background.
A gorgeous flowering tree.
3 members of Ima Robot.
Ima Robot’s bassist.
Another picture of the bassist, because the photos turned out so well.
The Rakes, at night - hence a little blur.
Jamie Lidell, my favorite act of 2006.
Gnarls Barkley’s string section, dressed as The Wizard of Oz’s flying monkeys.
Cee-Lo of Gnarls Barkley.
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Other Coachella Characters
Posted 10:50 AM, May 2, 2006 |
In addition to running into the Coppolas (Sofia, Francis Ford, etc.) (no Nicolas Cage, though), and seeing Bloc Party at the airport (not performing, just hanging out, presumably waiting for a flight), I saw #51. #51? I think that was his number.
#51 appeared, at first, to be your average Coachella concertgoer. Upon hearing him open his mouth, however, my understanding of him was transformed. He was, in fact, the most annoying person of the entire festival.
Yes, more annoying than the woman who laid on the grass while the other 29,999 people who came to see Madonna were standing, and then complained when someone kicked her shoulder accidentally, and then stood up and started smoking right in front of me and my healthy-lunged traveling companion, and then left within 2 minutes of Madonna taking the stage. Yes, more annoying than her.
#51 was at the water line. There were four dribblers (that’s a bubbler that’s run out of, well, bubble) which people could use to fill up water bottles. #51 was in line, and told me and my thirsty traveling companion that we should curl the line around behind him so people could get by without having to cut through the line. Um, okay, so you’re, like, in charge, then?
He thought so.
He proceeded to try to direct each and every person in the line. He wanted to tell them where to stand, how long he had been waiting. He was even directing traffic when people were getting up to the water fountains, making sure everyone was taking their proper turn. Someone tried to cut in or something and he called them on it, saying that he’d been waiting for 5 minutes. They said they’d been waiting just as long. “Oh, sorry,” he said, “I must not have seen you,” as if he hadn’t marked their name on his checklist.
It’s really hard to express how annoying this guy was in the 90 seconds I was near him. His daily life must be a struggle as he tries to direct everyone in the world into one long, curling, single-file line, all starting right behind him.
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Coachella Day Two
Posted 11:04 AM, May 1, 2006 |
Second day of Coachella: finished.
Longer day than yesterday, but better, too.
Phoenix around 4:00. Eh. Good, but sort of middle-of-the-road radio rock, although French radio! They’re a good little band, but most of their new songs didn’t stand out to me.
Jamie Lidell, same stage, next act, far superior. The guy’s a nut. Trenchcoat, gold vest, some guy running around the stage mopping up his sweat, putting necklaces and scarves on him. Strange act in that sense. Great electronic stuff, great voice. Great performer.
Gnarls Barkley, same stage, next act, were good. I don’t know any of their stuff, so I was pleasantly surprised. Energetic, with backup singers dressed as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, a string section dressed as those flying monkeys, a band dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West, Danger Mouse donning a Tin Man suit, and Cee-Lo as the Lion. Spectactle, but followed it up with a good performance. I’ll have to pick up the album now, so I guess it was a success.
I think Madonna played, but we were so far away and she was running so late, I really can’t be sure.
Coldcut, Coldcut, Coldcut. Good stuff. Excellent video, good. I don’t know what else to say. Probably my second favorite act - I don’t see a lot of DJs doing their thing, so it was good to see. I’m running out of adjectives.
Caught a little bit of The Go! Team - just a couple songs - but they seemed good. I don’t like the mix on their album - everything is pushed to the front and it sounds like it’s in the red the whole time - but their live show sounded a lot better, and usually I think live shows sound like all the instruments are 150%.
Closed out the night with Dungen, which started off okay (besides being late). Also featured the night’s biggest fan, someone who I spoke to before they came on who told me he’d never heard Dungen, couldn’t find their album, and didn’t know where they were from. He also thought their name was pronounced Dungeon, rather than with a silent g. I didn’t bother correcting him, and his mispronunciation was gold when he yelled, “We love you, Dungeon!” really loud. Biggest fan. As a band, they were good but quickly descended into noodling around on their instruments, at which point we left.
Overall, a great festival. Tons of people, and I was disheartened at first, trying to watch Clap Your Hands with too many people, but was glad to find that most of the acts were not as well-attended. There are numerous photos to follow, once I get back to my place in Minneapolis.
What do you think?
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