Please Buy Me Presents From this Site

Have you guys been reading the Things That Look Like Other Things blog? It's the best. Every time there's a new entry in my RSS reader, I have the exact same reaction, Groundhog Day-like. "Wow,"I mutter to myself in my cubicle, "that thing looks like that other thing. I want it!"

Here are the things that in particular I really feel my life is incomplete without:

Typos I Love

J spotted this at the Key Food by our apartment: Sassy!

Even thought I have an inconveniently (or conveniently?) placed doctor's appointment that allows me to sleep in, I woke up at 7AM. THANKS, BODY! Anyway, reading Metacritique, as I do, and caught a post about Interpol & Beck's Sea Changes. Let's skip over the part about Sea Changes, because I really like that album. On to Interpol:

One of the loneliest feelings in the world is being isolated from your peers in matters of taste....There’s a moment there where you could say it, couldn’t you? You could pipe up and mention that actually, now that the topic has arisen, Interpol does nothing for you, not even “Slow Hands,” not even the painfully moody ones that really can make you feel like you’re on a lot of blow.

Reading this seems like as good a reason as any to share my only Interpol story. I was at Niagara, which, embarrassingly, was a favorite bar in my early 20s. I liked to go there with friends, go to their basement, get icky drunk, dance downstairs, and help my friends evaluate the people hitting on us. I know, despicable, but it was younger days.

One night we were there early -- too early for the dancing, and way too early for the icky drunk. Maybe acceptably on time for taking pictures in their photo booth. I went up to the DJ (on the top floor) to request a song, and we got to talking.

The topic was music, and I'm sure it must have been somewhat related when I mentioned how "I really don't get Interpol's appeal. There's something so....boring about them, and I just want to drone myself to sleep whenever I hear a song of theirs." To which of course he replied, "Oh. Actually. The guys in Interpol are my really good friends; they come to this bar a lot and I helped on their album." And that's when I stopped saying opinionated, potentially offensive things out loud.

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life or something like that

I'm sure I saw the black undercover police SUV before I read Richard Price's Lush Life. The book starts with four cops in a fake cab, cruising around, looking for problems:

The Quality of Life Task Force: four sweatshirts in a bogus taxi set up on the corner of Clinton Street alongside the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp to profile the incoming salmon run; their mantra: Dope, guns, overtime; their motto: Everybody's got something to lose.

Even if I saw the black SUV before reading Lush Life, I never noticed it. After, it seemed to be in the neighborhood all the time and seeing the car with it's sirens on, decloaked, turning from Essex onto Delancey made me feel in the know. But I figured the taxi idea had been a literary twist.

'Til yesterday, when I saw four kids (teens, really) sitting on the curb alongside their van. The doors of the van were open so you could see in, to piles of blankets and inoffensive looking things. One of the kids was shirtless, with a bandaged wound on his back shoulder. Behind the van was a cab, and at first I imagined there'd been a fender-bender. But why, I thought, does the kid already have a bandage on? Then I noticed the whirling police light on the cab's dashboard, and thought, ooooh. I wonder if Richard Price witnessed a similar moment when he was plotting out the book.

Unsolicited Rave Reviews

Dear people at the gas station on Houston & Ave D:

Let's admit it: Things weren't looking good for me. I was in a gas station alone, surrounded by a motley selection of New Yorkers -- cabbies, folks in inordinately-large-for-ny cars, an orthodox Jew, and a man refueling his ice cream truck. My car was all gassed up, but wouldn't start.

No one was honking, but there was a man in a giant green SUV who looked like he had his hand poised. I kept putting my key in the ignition and turning. A/C - check; Radio - check; actual on-ness of car - nothing. When I tried to put the car in drive, it just slid backwards toward the man refueling the ice cream truck.

I tried another 12 times, give or take, trusting that "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" would pull through for me. The gas station attendant approached, as it became clear that theory wasn't working.

He wasn't able to get the car going, and neither was the Hispanic man who came over to help, saying "mami, just look at the instruction manual." More gas station attendants swirled around me, and I got lots of advice, until finally they put the car in neutral and dragged it away from the line of cars impatiently waiting to fuel.

I called zipcar, and it turns out that I used the car's key, when you're supposed to only use the magnetic entry card doohicky. The woman on the phone gave the car a hard restart (just like when you call Time Warner because your cable is out). Cheers to the zipcar lady, and jeers to me, for goofing everything up.

But biggest amazement and praise to everyone at the gas station, who was genuinely concerned, 100% patient, incredibly helpful, almost bizarrely involved, and truly uninterested in stealing my tote bag of freelance & wallet, which I did not monitor well in the chaos.. All this, and I even returned the zipcar 10 minutes early.

Was it a challenge, anonydan? If so, consider it accepted!

Made By Me.

Of course I did research before J, Joe, and I went to the Home Depot in Brooklyn to get plants for my rooftop garden. I consulted the internet, my mom (oh, anytime in April or May sounds good), and my dad (who gave a very precise date, along with evidence from the New York Times for the rightness of the timing) for the best date to start planting.

I spent about 50 bucks. Dirt is more expensive than you might think. I needed planters, and plants, too. $50 seemed like a lot for just a little garden, but I figured everything would go swimmingly after all my research, and that the garden would pay for itself in deliciousness.

As it turned out, swimmingly was an overly apt term for what happened to my garden. You know what happens next: The rain. Buckets of it. Daily rain for entire weeks. The dill was the first to go. One strawberry plant drowned, and the other one blew away. Times were tough, and I gave up. But these two lonely tomatoes survived -- twenty-five dollars each, delicious and costly.

o, hello!

Even with the rain, it is summer and I have been doing things. I've been to Connect-i-cut, Ohio, Baltimore's airport (do not like), & New Hampshire. I've been to three weddings. No progress has been made on my New Year's Resolutions. I have bought four dresses on eBay. Because of the rain, I have no tan lines & have not been to the beach. I've become obsessed with a French actor (this guy; fyi, I remembered his name by searching "daniel french actor" and cannot believe that technique was successful).

Mostly I haven't been up to a whole lot that I've felt like writing about. But you knew that already, since you can see the gap between this post and the last one. Here's a blog I read this week & liked: Metacritique. I don't really know much about the person writing, but he/she/they seem like possibly the only person who could write about the Alice Hoffman kerfuffle and make me care.

Cliches Gone Scary

To be honest, I can't really picture what it looks like for someone to gnash their teeth. It's the "g" in "gnash" that throws me off, possibly, but when I saw the phrase "literally gnashing her teeth" in a book recently, I tried to approximate what it would feel/look/be like. Is it biting? grinding? chewing? A forward-and-backward movement, or just side-to-side?

It was only after 48 seconds of this attempt to literally gnash that I remembered I was on the F train. I got off at the next stop and went to another car, so that no one would have to step away from me, terrified of my angry teething.

Times I have fallen down stairs...

Times I have fallen down stairs: three times
... in May: twice
... in heels: once
... while tipsy: once
... within a week of my birthday: twice
... while working: once
... with witnesses: once
... with bruising and soreness: all three times
... in my own house: once
... in a restaurant/bar: twice
... while on the phone: once

TNT Knows Emoticons

Emoticons do not make your lack of Mac-compatibility better.

Talking Dirty 2

I'd propose quim as another one of those words you see in books, but never, ever hear said aloud, except that Urban Dictionary informs me that the phrase "quim doctor" is slang these days. Consider yourself informed.

A few tangential notes:

• Do you think it confuses Google's tracking of me as a person and purchaser that my major searches today have been "vintage pyrex" "is pyrex worth something" "pyrex microwave?" "jo malone perfume" "bond no 9 perfume" "deep water highsmith movie" "stop kittens from biting" "out loud aloud" and "quim doctor"? I live in fear of my searches being exposed like those poor AOL users.
  
• I like that this antiquey slang word has been transformed into a modern-day slang term. Sort of like how Slate was able to connect Britney to Joyce & Shakespeare in less steps than you might imagine that would take.
  

Internet fact-checked again.

I was all set to proclaim that Patricia Highsmith's Deep Water should be made into a movie with the speed and the quickness. As if the movie-optioners were reading here, and would offer me the opportunity to write the script, despite a total lack of knowledge about script writing. Turns out, it's already been made.

Now I've shifted gears into a concern that the movie will be a disappointment. I'm not a visual person (see below; evidence) and it's rare that I read a book and have clear & specific images of the characters and events. Perhaps the movie won't match my internal visions? Here are some snippets from the book....

The first paragraph of the book:

Vic didn't dance, but not for the reasons that most men who didn't dance give to themselves. He didn't dance simply because his wife liked to dance. His rationalization of his attitude was a flimsy one and didn't fool him for a minute, though it crossed his mind every time he saw Melinda dancing: she was insufferably silly when she danced. She made dancing embarassing.

And then this, after Vic tells one of Melinda's would-be lovers that he'd killed one of her lovers in the past. It's a lie, but the would-be lover turns would-not:

The waltz had always been his favorite dance. He waltzed very well. He saw Melinda notice him and stop short with surprise. Horace and Evelyn were looking at him too. Vic shortened his steps so that he would not look silly, because a joyous exuberance had filled him as if a long-repressed desire had burst forth. He felt he could have flown with Mary, if it had not been for the other couples that cluttered the floor around him

"Why you're a wonderful dancer!" Mary said. "Why've you been hiding it all these years?"