Ultratart: It's Got Bite

Duh duh duh duh duh DUUUUUUH

So, it seems the long-rumored X-Files sequel is happening after all! Does this mean I have to get my action figures out of their little condo in my closet?

Collection Reflection

So, somehow I got to thinking tonight about things people choose to collect. My great-grandma used to collect tea cups and miniature shoes -- and now that I think about it, both of these things explain a lot about what I am like today (caffeine addicted with a shoe fetish and small feet, as it happens), as I spent a lot of time with her. Mostly watching Dallas, or sitting in front of her wall air-conditioner reading the National Enquirer. Never let it be said that children are not affected by the relationships they have with their grandparents. I dream about my grandmother quite a lot, and she is the only of my (several, unfortunately) dead relatives I EVER dream about, despite the fact that I am one of those people who has very vivid nightly dreams. I sometimes think these dreams are Visits From the Beyond, but I also think it's possible that I dream about her because I have so much of her stuff around -- mostly trinkets and jewelry now, but when I finally buy a place, I will get her stove, an amazing O'Keefe and Merrill with two ovens and a built-in griddle, so I can cook Thanksgiving dinner and pancakes at the same time.

As for me, there are people who would say that I collect outfits, and this is probably true. But mostly, I am a person who likes THINGS. I don't mean I like indiscriminate crap (although I'm sure there are people who have seen my apartment who would disagree). But I look at apartments in Domino, or on Apartment Therapy or whatever, and the ones that are all sterile and completely without objects -- with no books or interesting bibelots -- and they are just not my style. I like to be surrounded by reading material and lots of interesting items. Like, I collect old etiquette and housekeeping books, which I feel sort of covers both those topics. I LOVE them. When I was a kid, I used to spend WEEKS reading my mother's Amy Vanderbilt (re-vamped by Leticia Baldridge, social secretary for the Kennedy Administration). It has a whole chapter on CALLING CARDS! And a section on what to do if people who were once divorced get remarried (no formal announcement should be sent out, but you can inform your friends with a letter or telegram)! It's divine, and I actually still use it, occasionally cross-referencing it with my more recent Amy V. I have books with chapters about best to starch your organdy curtains. I have cookbooks with entries about how best to roast your turtle.

The good thing is that these items are fairly easily obtained -- which is also a bad thing, because I find them very hard to resist. But thank god I don't collect diamonds. What do you collect?

BABY BABY BABY

It's ENTIRELY my own fault, since I wrote about Celine Dion's mad awesome video for "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" on GFY today, but I have been singing this song since 11am this morning and it's really starting to get to me.

Also getting to me: why does the video imply that her lover died in a VERY DRAMATIC motorcycle accident, and the song imply that they just had a bad breakup? This has been bothering me since approximately 1996.

Do Gooding

As I've mentioned here before, I use a FEED bag to carry my groceries (and a few other random cloth bags, if I need them -- the FEED bag carries a crazy amount). The proceeds go to the UN's World Food Program and helps feed the school children of the world. Anyway, people always ask me about it at the market, which is nice because I feel like I (a) am helping the environment, (b) am spreading the word about the WPF, and (c) get to feel cozily self-congratulatory about both! Anyway, the WFP is doing something new that is also entertaining AND nicely procrastinatory. It's a simple vocabulary game, where for each word you correctly ID, 10 grains of rice are donated to the WFP. Because I am a word nerd, I am trying to get to vocab level 45, but it's not easy. I am also the person who will yelp, "none of these options are ENTIRELY CORRECT" on occasion, because, again: nerdy. Howsoever, it's a fun way to do some good whilst simultaneously sitting around and IMing people and watching TV -- my favorite kind!

Getting A Bit Literal, Aren't We?

So, I was reading this article about feng shui in Domino yesterday, and I looked over to my Relationships Area and realized it is where I keep my luggage. I LITERALLY have baggage stored there.

Not that I believe in any of that new wave clap trap or anything, but I totally moved it.

Helping Hands

It's not particularly revolutionary for me to note that these fires in Southern California have been just terrible. I know several people who've been evacuated, and I'm waiting to hear if our family friends have lost their home in Malibu (for what it's worth, I suspect their house made it through okay). My car is covered in ashes, despite living a good ten miles from the Malibu fires, and it is the hottest, dullest, smokiest day that I can remember since the last time there was a massive fire in Malibu, back when I was at UCLA -- where I remember being briefed on our own evacuation options, which thank god never came to pass.

The Los Angeles Times had a piece today about how to help, if you're so inclined. Otherwise, send some good vibes to the firefighters and most of all, to the weather gods. We need it to cool down around here. Or RAIN, although that seems as unlikely as aliens landing right now.

Sing Along Songs

So, I went to two concerts -- in a row! -- this week. Monday, we saw Rilo Kiley at the Santa Monica Civic, which I thought was great (although I am biased, as they're basically my favorite band), and Jimmy Eat World last night at the Wiltern, which I thought was fun but not mind-blowing. Jimmy Eat World has what was to me a weird lack of banter -- I saw them at Acoustic Christmas a billion years ago and I didn't notice this, but maybe they're always sort of silent as the grave. And frankly, I don't need the band to chat me up the whole time, but seriously, the only thing that was said at all was, "Thanks for coming out tonight," "We have a new album," and some complaining about issues with tech. Which means they come out and just play the shit out of it and leave, which can also be kind of fun. They were good, but you could tell they'd just kicked off the tour, and the crowd itself didn't really seem as into it as I had expected, which was a surprise. Which is not to say that it wasn't fun -- something about it just felt more perfunctory than I had anticipated.

But anyway, this morning I was looking for an MP3 of "I Love LA," which Rilo Kiley did for their encore (and which I found, actually from the show I went to, which is cool because I love knowing that one of the people going "WHOOOOOOOOO" in the middle of it is me) and was reading some message boards and reviews of this current tour and some people were commenting that at the concerts they attended, they couldn't really hear the band because of everyone singing along. Which, like Carrie Bradshaw, got me to thinking. For one thing, although people WERE singing along on Monday (including me), I didn't have any problem hearing the band. For another, one of the things I LOVE about shows is...everyone getting into it and singing along. I mean, clearly I am not going to go to the opera and attempt to match the soprano note for note (I save that for the car), and I would certainly never sing along if no one else in the crowd was, or if it were some very delicate, low-key tune but I always thought that if I were a musician, hearing hundreds of people singing my song with me would be mind-blowing. For me, it adds to the feeling of community that comes with live music. Am I breaking concert etiquette by singing along?

And speaking of Rilo Kiley, I must issue a minor retraction. The last time I saw them, at the Wiltern last year(ish), I noted on GFY that Feist, who was one of the opening acts, was TERRIBLE. And, honestly, she WAS terrible. She was totally wrong for the venue, and they stuck her after a really uptempo group with a brass section nine dudes deep, so everyone was pumped and she kind of brought the house down in the non-complimentary way. HOWEVER, we got loads of email from people telling us to give her another shot and lo and behold I totally have her most recent album and I think it's great. I have changed my spots on her, indeed.

Unclenching

As I noted in the comments in the entry below, I have Jaw Issues, and they all stem from the super sexy fact that I am a jaw clencher and a tooth grinder in my sleep and, dear reader, it is going to kill me. In addition to not helping with my migraine situation, it's gotten to the point where I am waking up and my teeth actually hurt -- from the clenching. This is tremendously alluring, I assure you, especially combined with my wicked bedhead.

People, I need help. This needs to stop. And I am at a loss as to how to make it stop. I have a mouth guard -- talk about sexy -- but nine times out of ten, I wake up the next morning holding the mouth guard in my (also tightly clenched) fist. This is not unusual for me, as I used to wake up holding my headgear in my tightly clenched fist as a teen, much to the delight of my sadistic orthodontist. Do I need hypnotherapy? Yoga? To take up smoking? I just want to know.

I Prefer Minty Gums

I spent much of this weekend in a domestic tizzy. There was vacuuming and Swiffering and Scooba-ing -- all my cleaning robots were put to good use -- and I polished my silver (not a euphemism) and washed dishes and cleaned out my closet. (And then, of course, I promptly ran out and bought a bunch of stuff to replace the two giant bags of clothes I gave to the Salvation Army. My desire for new cords, wide-legged jeans, patent leather knee boots, gold flats and a big chunky sweater could not be contained. I also bought groceries, but BORING -- other than to note that my Great Food Fast binge continues apace, and that I learned the valuable lesson that if you're planning to make a chicken stir fry, don't forget to buy the CHICKEN, YOU MORON. The moron being me. In my defense, Whole Foods on Sunday afternoon is like the 7th circle of hell.)

It's always nice to get your things in order, I find -- and I say that as a somewhat sloppy person by nature. Especially since I work from home, having the place not look like a pit is particularly helpful for my mental state. And lately, I've been trying to remember to take pleasure in the little things, like clean sheets and flowers on my desk. A good cup of coffee. A particularly satisfying piece of gum. (I love gum.) I don't mean that in a cloying FIND YOUR CENTER THROUGH APPRECIATING YOUR BLESSINGS sort of way, just that it's easy for me to get whipped into a frenzy over something minor but annoying and forget that there are all kinds of things in the world that are also minor but AWESOME and therefore, things are kind of evening out even when I am mid-frenzy.

The other big news of late is that -- as you may already know, if you read Heather's blog -- the Go Fug Yourself book is up for pre-order on Amazon.    AND it's on sale! Don't ever say we never did nothing for you (although in this case, we never did nothing for you, because we totally had nothing to do with that). Anyway, it's very exciting and surreal (the being on Amazon part, not the book itself. Particularly), and I hope people enjoy it.

I have to go chew some gum now.

Fashion KILLS

I almost got in a huge car accident the other day because there was a girl walking down the sidewalk and I could not tell if she was wearing a dress with a [very loud] shirt layered underneath it, or if she was wearing a massively heinous, weirdly-waisted skirt. The car in front of me decided to turn left after all and I got my eyes back on the road and oh my god, we all almost died.

I mean, of course the real lesson here is that I need to pay attention to the road rather than what people are wearing on the sidewalks, but I'd like those of you in wacky outfits a thought to those of us who are incurable rubberneckers.

My eyeballs are not what once they were, as I also accidentally confabulated two headlines to read, "DINA LOHAN WINS NOVEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE." Which...no. Apparently, that didn't happen.