I am screaming and punching myself

ARCHIVE: For what is so sweet as a girl-crush rekindled?

[Originally posted July 13, 2006 on MySpace -- and I have no idea how I missed it in the migration to this site. None.]

Oh, whammy. I had forgotten about my girl-crush on Heidi Klum (what with my #1 girl-crush, the divine Angelina Jolie, being in the news so much lately) until the third season of Project Runway premiered last night. But there she was, an incandescent ball of sweet goofiness given glorious human form, moving me to actually exclaim, "Awww!" when she first appeared onscreen.

What sealed the deal was when she discovered that a potential contestant was from Germany, like Klum herself, and began speaking rapid German with such obvious excitement and delight over encountering one of Her People. It was like watching a golden Labrador puppy do something especially endearing.

Now, I need to clarify the difference between a girl-crush and a regular crush. (Jason, don't read this part.) The kind of crushes I have on Jolie, Klum and Queen Latifah are the ones where I want to have coffee with them, hang out, talk and giggle, give them a big hug and let them know how wonderful they are. Now, I want to do all that with Ewan Macgregor, too, but I also want to commit specific indignities upon his body. I mean, I've got a to-do list here. It's the difference in crushes, in fact, that confirms to me that I'm a 0 on the Kinsey scale.

See?

ARCHIVE: "...and then (sniffle) the 'rich dad' touched me."

[Originally posted July 13, 2006 on MySpace]

I've tried to take an interest in my financial health lately, figuring that I'm in a sweet position in terms of housing costs and salary, and that even gorgeous shoes are no substitute for a comfortable retirement. So I've started to dip my toe into the pool of money-management books, and the first one I tried reading was Rich Dad, Poor Dad: This Book Has a Really Long Subtitle.

Written in the form of a tale from author Robert Kiyosaki's childhood, the book recalls how Kiyosaki's actual father -- the "poor dad" -- worked for a living but never seemed to get too far ahead. Yeah, he had a bunch of degrees and was the superintendent of education for the state of Hawaii, but that doesn't rank too high in Kiyosaki's estimation. Instead, Kiyosaki listened to the father of a friend -- the "rich dad" -- for guidance.

Now, the actual financial advice in the book is essentially an assortment of truisms and mumbo-jumbo. On the one hand, the advice to have a business that's separate from your profession sounds like a very good idea to me. On the other hand, there's stuff throughout the book like, "Don't work for money; make money work for you." Okay. How? He doesn't say.

So if you read it as a financial advice book, it will probably get on your nerves. However, if you read it as an account of a young boy's diabolical seduction by a ruthless, callous older man who cares only about power and manipulation -- a prelude to some horrifying abuse that we never witness -- it's an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller.

Suddenly, it makes a sickening kind of sense: the deliberate alienation of the boy from his real father (who seems like a nice enough guy), the little games where the "rich dad" tries to make the boy read his mind, the way the "rich dad" uses money and the love of money the way some pedophiles use porn to ensnare their victims: here's something enticing that we both share, something that only we men of the world truly understand.

You'll find yourself wanting to cry out, "No, Robert! Don't listen to him! Most of what he says doesn't make a lot of sense, anyway, and besides, what kind of person makes a 9-year-old kid wait outside his office to prove how powerful he is? (Seriously, what kind of a dick move is that?) Run home to your real dad! He seems like a nice enough guy!" And the tension will keep you turning pages, even as you pause to go, "Wait, what? Didn't he say the very opposite thing a few chapters ago?"

This guy had a similar -- although much, much stronger and much more exhaustively documented -- response to the book, although he didn't apply the same ... er, creative lens to it that I did. Honestly, I think I learned more about finances from reading that page than I did Kiyosaki's book.

Note to Robert Kiyosaki's legal team: This is pure speculation on my part and not intended for any purpose other than the mortified entertainment of my five readers. Plus, if my recollection of The People vs. Larry Flynt serves me correctly, libel laws are in my favor, anyway. Either way, please don't sue me.

ARCHIVE: Local cars that scare me (another potentially endless series)

[Originally posted July 12, 2006 on MySpace]

Driving home last night, I saw an SUV that scared the crap out of me. Its rear window was plastered with stickers, forming an impressively symmetrical arrangement -- of pain.

Jesus' pain, to be specific. The entire center of the window depicted Jesus with a massive crown of thorns. "Fear God" was arched above it. Stickers proclaiming "Jesus for Life" appeared on either side, as did stickers showing a wrist with a nail pounded in it with "Body Piercing Saved My Life" underneath.

The license plate? JUDGMNT.

I actually found that car scarier than, say, a hearse with a bumper sticker saying "I eat babies, yum yum!" It seemed to be taking what I would think was a glorious event for Christians and focusing on the absolutely wrong part of it. It seems to me (as a dormant Episcopalian and semi-Buddhist) that the important part of Christ's crucifixion was the redemption it brought for all believers, not the pain that he went through. If anything, focusing on the pain makes me feel bad for the other political prisoners or non-criminals who were crucified during that era and didn't have anything to show for it.

Anyway, it creeped me out. As if the driver wanted to remind me of how much suffering Jesus went through and feel as bad as possible about it.

On the other hand, I made damn sure not to tailgate him or cut him off.

ARCHIVE: If I clench, I'll shatter my chair

[Originally posted July 12, 2006 on MySpace]

After an aptly-named BodyAttack class full of jump-squats and lunges on Monday, a BodyPump weightlifting class on Tuesday, and today's act of carrying a dorm refrigerator down the hall to my new office, I feel like Space Ghost declaring, "I can open a can of spinach using my butt muscles!"

Seriously. I'm all Nacho Libre up in here.

Also: I could spend hours here re-living great silliness from the mid-90s. Hours.

ARCHIVE: All right, that's zit.

[Originally posted July 10, 2006 on MySpace]

My skin has been in something of a revolt lately (God knows I'm finding it revolting). Several smallish zits have popped up all over my face, stirring in me the desire for a tearful accusatory scene where I wail, "Did those six months on Accutane mean nothing to you?!"

The worst part, though, is that one of those zits has been sitting atop my upper lip, on the crest of the left point of the "M" formed by my ... filtrum, I think it's called. Lip Zits are their own special brand of hell: it's a zit, it's in a location with more nerve endings than the rest of the face and it's in a spot that's not only highly visible but a little dodgy as well.

Generally, I slap some concealer on there and it's at least partially hidden for the rest of the day. But at the gym, all makeup is toast; whatever isn't removed deliberately before class is soon sweated off. So for the past few days, I've had to walk around my gym with a Lip Zit, longing for a t-shirt proclaiming, "I don't have herpes, just lousy skin. Quit looking at me like that."

ARCHIVE: The sounds of silence

[Originally posted July 9, 2006 on MySpace]

Last night, Jason and I held a "Just Plain Wrong" Viewing Party (it's a semi-regular thing with us). The evening's selections were Valley of the Dolls and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; I was the only one in our party of 11 who had seen both.

The thing is, I'd seen them so many times that I'd become a kind of scholar of both films.* The profound weirdness of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls no longer phases me in the slightest. If anything, I love its lunatic cinematography, sex-drugs-murder-and-bad-music plot and almost dada-ist dialogue. But I had forgotten how alien it is upon first viewing.

So after the film ended, I looked upon our guests, who had all fallen silent. It wasn't one of those contemplative "what an interesting film; let me take a moment to compose my thoughts" silences, though. It was the stunned silence of "What the fuck was that?!"

Which kinda cracked me up. It was my happening, and it freaked them out.

* My review of both DVDs for HoleCity.

ARCHIVE: When copy editors watch closed-caption TV

[Originally posted July 7, 2006 at MySpace]

Sometimes the compulsion to correct can pop up at odd times. During a fascinating segment about "pony play" on HBO's "Real Sex" (I finally caught the beginning of the episode that features the now-legendary Real Doll segment -- yippee!), a dude in leather straps and a headdress that looked to be made out of nylon weave talked about his, er, equine heritage. The caption read, "I'm a Parisian war pony," but, to my own chagrin, I mentally corrected it to "Friesian." Yes, I know what breed of horse would most likely wear fake weave. That's a Friesian on the right, there. It's the only picture I could bring myself to search for at work.

I was far more proud of myself, though, while watching Trainspotting on IFC. When Renton first announces his intention to give up heroin, the caption read, "I'm off this gag." I was able to say, with confidence and self-assurance, "I believe you mean the scag." Boo-yah!

ARCHIVE: I look like WHO?

[Originally posted July 7, 2006 on MySpace]

Okay, now, this is just fascinating. If you upload a photo of your face to this site, it will analyze that photo and tell you which celebrities you most resemble. I wouldn't have picked Holly Hunter as the celebrity I look like the most, but according to MyHeritage.com, the photo at the left (i.e., my face) bears a 74% likeness to her. Which is totally cool and fine by me, but I'm utterly mystified at the other folks they picked for resemblance to me:

Ashley Olsen - 74% (the blonde?)

Vivien Leigh - 73% (sweet!)

Johnny Depp - 72% (I've thought about this and decided I'm flattered)

Isabelle Adjani - 72% (not bad!)

Victoria Beckham - 71% -- okay, now those are fighting words, because Posh Spice, in addition to an awful singing voice, more money than Colonel Sanders and a profoundly hot -- if adulterous -- husband, has a major case of pig-face. I have my swinish moments, to be sure, but I like to think I don't wear them on my face. I mean, come on!

What's weird about this to me is that they didn't mention the two celebrities I think I most resemble: Janeane Garofalo at her heavier, non-blonde stages and a double-wide Jennifer Connelly. Maybe I'm kidding myself. Ah, well. There are certainly worse things than looking like Holly Hunter -- there's looking like Ashley Olsen and Posh Freaking Spice.

ARCHIVE: Caffeine is a hell of a drug

[Originally posted July 7, 2006 at MySpace]

You know, I sometimes forget that caffeine is, in fact, a drug, a chemical that produces changes in thought patterns and behavior. Then every so often, I get reminded.

Like today. I've been cutting back on the caffeine at home, mixing regular coffee with my yummy, yummy Fresh Market Holiday Blend decaf. I mixed it like that more for flavor than anything else (having run out of regular Holiday Blend months ago), but I figure it can't be a bad idea to reduce the caffeine in my system.

However, the stuff I brew in the office is full-strength coffee, and for some reason, coffeemaker coffee is much stronger than the foofy mocha machiato drinks I'm so fond of. So I had a cup of reduced-strength coffee at home today, then a large cup of full-strength coffee that I stretched through the morning and I am still bouncing off the fucking walls.

Honestly: I feel like I could start scat-singing like a 78-RPM David Lee Roth or something. I feel like shadowboxing, or chair-dancing, or doing both at the same time. While waiting for my pizza to heat up in the microwave, I felt the urge to do a highly detailed chicken impression, including scratching the ground with one foot. Had my friend Maggie been in her office, I would have visited her and done exactly that. (Memo to Maggie: girl, you dodged a bullet made of weirdness today.) Note to readers: I wish to Christ I could find the person responsible for the picture at the right. Whoever they are, I want to be their friend.

And it's kind of creeping me out to think, 'Hmmm. This is a fairly powerful reaction I'm having -- and it's not even the full strength of the stuff I was used to for so long. What the hell has been going on in my brain all this time?' Man, I get nervous enough imagining what the cats might be doing in the living room while I'm not watching; wondering what all that caffeine has been doing to my cerebral cortex is making me particularly edgy.

Of course, that could just be the caffeine talking.

ARCHIVE: Wanted: offspring to order

[Originally posted July 6, 2006 at MySpace]

Between watching Part 1 of Manor House on DVD and catching Millions on HBO, I've come to the conclusion that if I could somehow rig the situation so I wound up with a tyke like the main young'uns in those entertainments, I'd be quite willing to have a kid.

Both Anthony and Damian in Millions are clever and thoughtful. Anthony is pragmatic (if somewhat cynical) and has an incredible head for math and economics, while his little brother Damian is altruistic and moral to a fault. In the first episode of Manor House, 10-year-old Guy gives an amazingly insightful breakdown of privilege and freedom while talking with his tutor, and he seems genuinely appreciative and grateful for the things the servants do for him. Lovely boys, all 3 of them.

So if I had some kind of guarantee from the universe that I'd produce a smart, perceptive, kind, considerate son (with no major health problems and a face that wouldn't scare the livestock), I'd be quite willing to undertake the whole reproducing enchilada. (I'm leaning more towards a son, because I don't know how I'd manage to raise a daughter not to be self-destructive. I can't even do that for myself sometimes.)

But there's nothing remotely like a guarantee for having a kid. There's no guarantee that you'll have a kid that combines both parents' best attributes, or even that the kid will split the difference between the best and the worst of the parents. There's no guarantee that you won't have one of those kids who's born without a conscience, who beats up toddlers and hunts down pets no matter what kind of example or direction the parents provide. There's no guarantee that you'll produce a healthy kid; that all that partying you did in your 20s won't catch up with you in the most horrible way; that although you don't think you're too old to have a kid, your body might have other ideas. There's no guarantee you'll survive giving birth, and if that isn't a colossal gamble, I don't know what is.

One observation that I thought Anthony Robbins (of all people) got quite right is that the quality of your life can be determined how comfortable you can be with uncertainty. Perhaps another aspect of that is realizing how much uncertainty surrounds every aspect of everything human beings do and accepting that uncertainty. In a sense, there's no guarantee that I'll survive the weekend (particularly considering the daquiri consumption I have planned). At some point, I'll have to come to grips with how little control I truly have over much of anything. Maybe then, I can make a semi-rational choice about having a kid rather than saying, "Could I have one of them there British cherubs?"