Schmabate

Well, well, well. How many patriotic pins can one fit on a lapel?

So, we know that both veep candidates respect each other, and that's a good thing; they, uh, both have accomplishments to their name, though I believe Joe does more than Ms. Palin.

Straight up, now tell me, Sarah. What are you going to do for me and my fellow Patriots? She claimed that she prefers the debate's "straight talk" rather than letting the pundits trick up her words. But she didn't say much of anything besides that she loves Alaska, being a Soccer Mom on Saturday mornings and sometimes she sits around the kitchen table worrying about how to pay for necessary medical bills that her Party's ticket isn't going to make any easier to pay off. Oh, and taxes. Let's get back to those taxes. Can we go back to the taxes? I love taxes and I'm gonna tax the shit out of you, America, she says it with a smile so it's like a spoonful of sugar helping the cyanide go down. Plus, John and Sarah are hometown mavericks who love third graders, and making shout outs on TRL.

I don't think she'll get greedy and corrupt Wallstreet's vote. Phew!

Biden, Biden, Biden. Good ole, Joe. He was a great debater. He knew specific facts, corrected Palin's mistakes, had a great demeanor about him the entire night and he was honest. Oh, he’s so nice: You’re “dead wrong” John McCain – but I love him. I love him. Marry me. Marry me, John. I know I just said I don’t support gay marriage, but I can’t help how I feel. This is my plea; marry me. I've read some comments that claimed he spoke too often in "Senate Speak" whatever the hell that means, probably that he didn't address the People as "Joe Six Pack" - so he's a guy who knows his stuff, isn't that the type of person you want behind the second most powerful desk in the country? Yeah, I do, but apparently not everyone. People like people they can relate to. YAY! Let's make the basketball coach President, he's dealt with parents from the other teams, he can handle foreign policies and he grills the best spread of the summer! Put 'im on the ticket!

Enough of me. If you didn't catch the debate last night, or you need a recap, read this. Seems pretty balanced and left-leaning, just like I like it - sane. And here are some fun pictures of the history of humans and debate from Slate.

Do you hate McCain? Do you want to hate him more, or know why you should in the first place? Then read this eye-opening, all-told article from the forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone. Maverick, Schmaverick. Jerk face is more like it!

Well, excuuuuuse me!

Steve Martin is sooooo funny! I can't ever get enough of him. You can never have too much of Mr. Martin, either. Like Mr. Rogers, but ridiculously hilarious and occasionally inappropriate. I stumbled upon this 2007 interview with Susan Morrison, reading from his new memior, Born Standing Up, talking about his life in comedy and clips from the past. Really good stuff. Mr. Martin is eloquent and humble. Additionally, Ms. Morrison does a great job of opening him up for the audience to get a better picture of this man, this myth, this legend: Steve Martin.Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

Oh, and the last person to make a comment is Dick Dale, a guitar great - King of the Surf Guitar. Who plays this song: "Miserlou" - Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. This video is incredible as only those 60s clips can be. The dancing? C'mon! Flail about! The rockers? Rock! The camera? Whoooooooa! Slow down on those crazy cut-tos towards the end there; everyone's all crazy smiles on their guitars. One complaint - as awesome as it was - is that they didn't slow Dick Dale's fingers flying up and down the frets. Bummer.

Also, not really related to Mr. Martin - at all - Tina Fey as Palin interviewed by Poehler as Couric on SNL. Good stuff. Real good stuff. And, shocking as it may not be, many of Fey's words came from the real Mrs. Palin's mouth. How. 'Bout. That?!

How Bizzah!

***PICTURE SURPRISE POST***

I think this is the first time, in a long time, that I'm posting outside office hours! Woweewhoaweewow, you may be saying, and also, This is gonna be good. Real good.

Well, you're right. It is. It is.

And weird. Weird occurrences/sightings (starting at #2).

#1 - I GOT A BIKE!!! (A bike!! A bike!!) It's called a SPRITE, that's right!! It's a li'l bronze Raleigh Cruiser from the early 70s - awlriiiiiight. I'm gonna get a basket put on it tomorrah, and I'll need some lights, too. But, ooooohhhhhh, not a lock. Nooooo, I won't be needing a lock. Because I've got the fuckin' lock of locks, only magic and fire can take my bike from me now!!! This. is the lock. Yes. Of locks.

--OKAY, SIDE NOTE!!! MUSIC CHOICE, ON MY TV!!!

#1 CONT'D - Lock. Of Steel. The Bulldog STD. Yeah, I tittered a bit at the name, too. Oh. You didn't? Haha. Right. Anyway, I stopped laughing when I checked out their website to register my 4 - oh, wait - 5 keys (and one of 'em is humungo and has a bright LED in it!) and I think it's gonna take a lot to kill a four-headed bulldog. So yeah, it's super strong, and apparently Chicago is the Theft Capital of the Country. Really? That's what the bikeman said. Nope, that's NY for a few years, then Philly. We're #2. Yeaaaaah! Bike's protected! This is basically it, bronze and everything. I think I'll call it Brown Lightning. What do you think? True, and slightly amusing. A diarrheal double entendre, if you didn't get that. Hah.

#2 - Walking up Michigan after work, there was a woman with a surgical mask on. I was very puzzled. I probably stared. A surgical mask. She didn't look like a surgeon. Half between a stressed out cat lady and bag lady - pretty crazy. Maybe that explains the mask. Or, the germs!! (Like cats and babies have, because there are so many downtown!) Then I imagined what it would be like if everyone were wearing surgical masks, and some of us chose to get designed ones because we wore them so much. A - that'd be creepy walking, and being, a masked person - or, if everyone else was masked and you weren't. Basically zombies. B - scary potential future vision that I can thank Al Gore for bringing to the forefront in all speeches, nightmares. What bad air! My lungs can't even stand to take in directly. So, that's LA, huh? Maybe winters aren't so bad? Hmm? Hmm.

#3 - CSI: Chicago. At the shop, after the really rickety bus ride - boy, oh boy! Again, I'm talking with the dude who's fixing my bike up ah-real nice. Two serious men in navy jumpsuits and latex gloves approach, I am notified by the dude; Here comes the morgue. I'm puzzled, he explains. Three people are dead upstairs. Overdose. They got into some bad stuff, they took too much. The needles were still in their arms. The morgue's been in, out and around all day. I'm shocked and all I can say is, That's too bad, and shake my head. Then, It's like something out of CSI. My Mom would've loved that! And then the dude starts talking about his daughter wanting to get into that line of work. He's not too happy about it, but if it makes her happy. It's a pretty horrific and depressing career we decided. Handling dead bodies who were living people sometime recently, figuring out the reasons. I couldn't stomach the initial shock, let alone the science! But y'know, if someone can and they're happy, alright. That's what I always say - maybe just to myself - if you're happy and not hurting anyone or yourself, then, alright. Yeah. Anyway, by the time the dude finished sprucing it up: adding new brake pads, cables, wrenching and stuff; I took a few spins around the park; I ran across the street to the Liquor Store's ATM to get dollars; lock installed/explained, there was no sign of a body bag sighting, though the escalation built considerably with each white van addition to the crew.

The ride home was a dream. Beautiful night. Don't even get me started on the debate.

Oh yeah, so the bikeshop (ONEWORD cause I say it so fast) is: Nearly New and it's at: 3826 N. Broadway. Friendly, helpful, blast sweet tunes, knowledgeable, fast, expert, rockin' goodness.

Brown Lightning: $165
Lock of Locks: $25

OH, yeah, and a 60 day supreme warranty, and awesomeness to provide quality affordably in the future post-60. Sweetness.

Nail Gnawer

That's me. Sitting in my li'l cube, gnawing on my nails, which, to the passing observer probably looks like I'm gnawing on my entire hand.

Shnawr, shnawr, shnawr, shnawr.

Yes, that's the sound of me gnawing away.

It's a nervous habit. Sometimes it goes away, sometimes it comes back and makes my fingertips bleed (well, wait. Not my fingertips, per se, rather the top of the nail bed? Sure. We'll go with that), but not really. My best friend in elementary school used to literally chew her nails down to bloody stumps. Gross. My father and step-mother still remind me to keep my fingers out of my mouth. I'm 23. Sometimes my older brother chimes in, and then I cut him with a jagged - half-filed by mouth - nail. That's what ye get! Yes, I'm a cockney-ed scaliwag!

Also, whenever I do manage to get some suckers growing, I get hangnails. My toenails grow faster than my fingernails. (I almost wrote "handnails" -what?! A disturbing image if you can imagine nails on your knuckles, not necessarily sticking up like Wolverine, but covering the knuckle, protectively, as only a nail can do.)

I like having long-ish nails, though for aforementioned reasons this is hard for me to attain.

Also, I play guitar. This requires my left fingernails to be shorter than average so I can zip and zoom (or rather fumble) along the frets and notes.

When I was a little girl, my Grandma Dorothy (Dad's Mom) - we called her Dot - would pay me $5 if I had nails when I saw her. I never got those $5 bills... if I did, I can't remember, and I probably spent it on candy. (I LOVE CANDY!) This is the same Grandma who lived in California, loved bowling and Boston Terriers.

She loved those little Terriers so much in fact that she had one after another (no, she didn't give birth to them, but bought) and named them all "Boots" I-VI - sequentially - (she was a knitter, too, and had little knit portraits of them on her wall - she was a widow) I think it got up to 6, yeah... and then there was "Terry" the Boston Terrier, too. Towards the end, "Boots VI" developed a cataract, which made it hard for him to play catch. One Christmas he ran straight into the sliding glass door - hilarious! This was the same Christmas he knocked down my li'l baby brother and humped the hell out of him. My older brother and I thought this was the funniest thing we'd ever seen - so did everyone else in the fam - but my step-mother freaked the fuck out, and was nooooooooot happy. She screamed, "Get off my baby! Get off my baby!" As she ran to shoo Boots off of a gigglin' and confused baby, causing everyone to clutch their sides. She collected her baby and shot us all a look that said, "This is not funny." After the laughing subsided and Boots roamed outside to eat butterflies, we all breathed a sigh of relief as we wiped the happy tears out of our eyes. FAMILY!!!

Grandma Dot also took me and my brother to see "A League of Their Own" (I think I cried and didn't know why I was so sad, ahhh the emotional capacity of a 7-year old, and then I wished Madonna was my aunt, if not my cool babysitter) when I was a small girl, and I remember she sat on a phone book as she drove us to the theater and could barely see over the wheel, let alone through the haze of cigarette smoke that circled around the maroon crushed velvet interior - she shouldn't have been driving. She also drank a tall glass of iced buttermilk every morning, paired with a cigarette, while she helped us pick the best oranges to juice - OH, CALIFORNIA!!! What fond memories I have of you during Christmas-time. She also had a slug problem in her garden, so, sometimes after lunch, she would set us loose in her yard with salt shakers. It was fun watching 'em squirm around.

There are many more stories I have of the funny things Grandma Dot did, and I've seriously thought about attempting to write a book of short stories about the people and places that've influenced me over my short 23 years on this planet. For Grandma Dot I would do a comparison/contrast storytelling-style paired up with my Grandma Arlene (Mom's Mom). Arlene & Dot it would be called. The name of the collective work? I don't know yet. Both of my awesome, and very different, Grandmas died before the turn of this century. Yeah, it's sad, but not as sad as it is for my parents. How horrible would it be to lose a parent, let alone both. Grandma Arlene died in '97, '98?, I can't even remember, but occasionally my Mom still cries about missing her - I probably would, too, Grandma Arlene was incredible and the best storyteller! Luckily, my Momma still has my Grandpa Bill. My parents are never going to die, ever. I keep them in Foreverware (from "Eerie, Indiana" - doiy!!) to keep 'em fresh.

Oh yeah, so I started this post around pre-lunch and still had a thumbnail... but I gnawed it off. No nail tapping in boredom for me!!

Modest Mouse's "One Chance" is a pretty song. It always makes me want to live a better life, and it reminds me of my family, and my friends, and my habits, but mostly my family, and ships. I like it. Prolific description, huh? Eyeaaaaaaaah.

Really, Donald Trump? Really!?!

The Donald is at it again. Always stirring up some sort of scene, doing the wrong thing. Trump was on Larry King Live last night and voiced his endorsement of Presidential nominee John McCain.

Why, Donald? Why do you endorse this man?

Because he's my friend. He's a really great guy. I call him tremendous. Great. Really great. He's not going to make me pay more money, either. Even if I make more money, and by if, I mean when. He's great. Makes life easy on me.

What about his age and his politics?

Yes, he may have one foot in the grave, with Palin behind him holding a shotgun, and he may be a puppet for people like me - with money - but he's great. A truly great, tremendous, engaging, wonderful man. He's very funny. He tells the best jokes at Cindy's dinner parties. There was this one where -

What's your problem with Obama?

He's not a great man. He's going to make me pay the people who work for me, and take account of my expenditures. And I don't know him. I haven't had dinner with him. I invited Barack and Michelle over but they were too busy volunteering. He wants to raise my taxes.

Well, actually he....

My money is mine, Larry. I'm great and I own my money! And your money, and America's, and the world's. MWHAHAHAHAHAHAH! I AM DONALD TRUMP!!! [Shakes his fists in the air triumphantly]

The Music World Mourns

The Great Gig in the Sky

Richard Wright of Pink Floyd lost his battle with cancer today, he was 65.

Robin Hilton of NPR's All Songs Considered wrote a beautiful remembrance and you can read it here.

[More tuneage] And, of course, Wish You Were Here is an incredible album, and is bookended by two of my favorite songs, both exemplfying Wright's awesome talent: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (I-V) and Shine On You Crazy Diamond (VI-IX).

Laser Beams & Anchors

Thursday night I went to the Walter Meego/Ra Ra Riot show at the Subterranean with my good friend, and college old roomie, Maggie “A-Hi!” D.! Great performances from both bands, though I was very disappointed in the lack of dancey enthusiasm that Walter Meego deserved and did not receive. They are super dance-tastic, and the crowd wasn’t digging them for whatever reason. Like I’m talking dance-tastic to the utmost degree; so dancey you’d expect lasers and smoke to come forth from of their instruments! There were several times I was all fast fisting the air, and dancing feet rotations on the ground. The lack of crowd awesomeness induced several moments of me yearning to clap my hands and make them disappear so I had more room to groove and get down. Alas, this was not possible, but I managed to dance myself a pretty decent-sized space in the mid-back.
Luckily, after Walter Meego finished my complaints of crowd location was overheard by these two awesome dudes that instructed Maggie and myself to follow them forward. We got right up next to the stage, on the left side. Amazing! Ra Ra Riot was full of energy and sounded incredible – despite what seemed like the sound dude’s attempts to thwart them with slow response on the band’s requests to “up the mics” for certain members and their instruments (“Too Too Fast” was slightly ruined in that the cellist’s mic wasn’t working for her vocal chorus addition). The ladies of RRR had the raddest instruments, as both the violin and cello were basically invisible, only constructed of a wire frame and stem (I don’t know the technical term for that which holds the strings… uh, the, um, frets? No… that’s not it. Whatever, you get it.). They played every song off The Rhumb Line and delivered immensely on matching and surpassing the album’s production quality. I was very impressed and upon leaving the show, wanted more, more, more! I like that all the members dig each other and really seemed to enjoy themselves. I mean, how could you not?! I even found myself growing slightly jealous of their fabulosity, wishing that I, too, was “living the dream”. But kudos and props to them for dreaming it and doing it! It’s also a good thing the crowd was much more into RRR, or at least if they weren’t I couldn’t see ‘em from my awesome spot, because I would’ve had to lay the smack down more seriously. I do slightly recall accosting a couple attendees for not digging the scene and standing with the arms folded across their chests. “Why do you even waste your money? Can’t you just bop your head to the beat? Really, nothing?! You’re just going to stand there? Okay. I hate you.”