Daily Batman: Executive Producer Dick Wolf

Daily Batman: Hipster fashion round-up

I know it is fun to make fun of hipsters, but you have to admit they are cute. I especially love the last picture. Girl friends: they are a thing!

What was I thinking and kindergarten fingernails

Helping my mother set up for a church luncheon today and, helloooo, it’s Special K’s big night — Homecoming! She is nominated for Queen, in case I did not mention it ten times today yet. What was I thinking? I need to get ahold of her and figure out when she wants hair, makeup, etc, and if she wants it from me or has someone else doing it, where homecoming even is (our high school does not have a stadium), everything. I’m way too busy to go picture-whoring!

Okay, Special K called right while I was writing all that. Info is straightened out. As soon as I hung up the phone started ringing in my hand; it was my mother calling to shout from some bulk grocery store where she was shopping for the luncheon with one of her trim old-lady cronies to ask what you put apples in to keep them from browning. “I hate to bother you but I’m sure you’re at the computer.” I told her it was lemon juice, confirming what the trim old-lady crony had suggested already, and was apprised of my portion of the set-up schedule. Suddenly my day went from quiet drive with my cameras to nonstop blow-up.

Blah! It’s all happening. I hate that I forgot this day is nuts and have no emotional groundwork laid in preparation. I have to be around people soon. I am not ready. Anyway, so I deduced that I have an hour or two before the chaos descends. So I painted my nails to kill some time, having let kidlet choose the colors (red with pink tips). I got random shakes, like I always do whenever a nail varnish brush is in my hands, so it also looks like a five-year-old painted them in addition to picking their style. It doesn’t matter how old I get, I always fuck up my nails. I can cook gourmet meals, I can apply layer after layer of flawless mascara, I can make perfect pincurls in my kidlet’s hair, but I cannot for the life of me paint my fingernails. I think I will always be a child in that department.

Overdue decision

So that’s about enough avoiding the Diana. I’m off to take pictures of the lonesome October because I like my camera and it is mine and it doesn’t matter where it came from.

Kidlet’s godmother is coming today to make cupcakes and do Halloweeny shit. I will hit the road with my finished film, freshies, flash and gels in hand, and hopefully come back poorer but happier.

Daily Batman: Advice from a venerable source

“In the night, all cats are grey.” — Benjamin Franklin

Pretty sure he was referring to his penchant for older women, but I’ll happily apply it to a redhead in vintage lingerie and a cat mask. That guy was one smart cookie, am I right?

Advice: How to win friends and avoid being burnt at the stake

1993’s Hocus Pocus: pretty much the only thing in which I have ever seen Sarah Jessica Parker and actually found her to be attractive.

I have never seen Sex and the City. Not even one episode. As near as I can tell it doesn’t star her so much as her remains. Have some cheesecake, Skippy.

Anyway, back in 1993 she still had a little something going on in the upper decks, and she brought a kind of abandoned, childlike sylph-style ebullience to this role that was a surprisingly genuine and fresh take on such a stock role, and could have been played vampy and bimbo-tatstic in other hands.

Plus, you slap a blonde wig and some red lipstick on almost anybody and they are automatically going to be looking pretty good and I’m going to warm to them; I cite Bugs Bunny as evidence. I already liked him for that busted grill, so I was all about Lady Bugs.

I like Sarah Jessica Parker lookswise in this movie for all her blondeness, slightly immodest bosomness, and for-once-not-coated-in-makeup sharp-witch-chin-moledness. (I do like flaws!)

We tried to rent this last night down at Paolo and Miss D’s, but the ondemand was having none of it. Total folklore to pay for a movie that old and often-watched. Screw ABCFamily! We rented Monster House instead. In your face, Disney Corp.

Winifred Sanderson: Don’t get your knickers in a twist! We’re just three kindly old spinster ladies.
Mary Sanderson: Spending a quiet evening at home.
Sarah: Sucking the lives out of little children!

But I’ve been thinking about it since we considered renting it, and I drew some conclusions about the characters of the witches and what fears they represented; like what were their real crimes (I mean, other than being honest-to-god witches who were morally in bed with Satan).

It seemed to me that each witch had a central character trait around which the rest of her personality was constructed, and the actresses played those up in their performances. These traits were the unpardonable sins. The ones that got them burnt at the stake with no voice to defend them. So here’s a little list, from me to you. You’re welcome. Think nothing of it!

Things that’ll get your burnt at the stake in a rural Puritan village at the turn of the eighteenth century:

Being too smart. Very threatening. Don’t be calculating and gathering power to yourself when there are crops to bring in. People ain’t got time for your political and intellectual shit: they are trying to survive. You leave the power balance alone.

Being a bit of a “slow coach.” You make people uncomfortable, and Martin Luther advocated euthanizing you. You’re a danger to the entire community because you’re an unknown factor, and you’re lucky you’re even alive. Now go gnaw a chicken bone in the corner, inbred.

Being a bubbly, nymphomaniacal boy-stealer with nice boobs. That’s gonna get you burnt at the stake in any century, Cupcake.

Good luck out there!

Music Moment: The Boy Least Likely To, “I’m Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star”

The Boy Least Likely To – I’m Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star

This is an odd little duck of a song, but in its way it has a pretty realistic take on love and how, to paraphrase Lennon, life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans.

I was young and I was stupid, I had just turned seventeen
I took my hits on a dumb road trip to Nashville, Tennessee
I packed my antihistamines and Tupperware drums
A harmonica and a box guitar
In a canvas covered wagon stuffed with apples and with guns

We quietly slipped across the border into Arkansas
But still we couldn’t find what it was we were looking for
So we trucked on down to try our luck along the Rio Grande
But I couldn’t help but notice how
The little things that used to make us happy, made us sad

But still I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star
I never would’ve got here if I’d followed my heart
I didn’t think much of it till I took it apart
I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star

We never ever made it down to Nashville in the end
And no one ever signed our stupid country disco band
However hard we tried, it never seemed to be enough
We never did get famous
Still it made us kind of happy and it kept me off of drugs

And now I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star
I never would’ve got here if I’d followed my heart
I didn’t think much of it till I took it apart
I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star

But still I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star
I’m happy if you’re happy but it breaks my heart
I didn’t even notice it ’til it fell apart
I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your star

These lyrics make me reflect. They make me recognize that there is no perfect way of doing things when it comes to love, there is no Right Answer or exact formula. There simply isn’t. You just have to take what comes to you, and struggle to recognize and capture and adore and stroke its greatness while it is still in your hands; you have to cling to it and cherish it and wring the meaning from what it is, instead of picking it apart for what it isn’t until it is just crumbs in your hands.

Pricklypear li’l G and couch fort bravado

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre:

Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”

“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.

“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”

Do you remember the positive indignation of adult severity in the face of your early self-expression? I think the knife really twisted because you knew they were just flying by the seat of their pants, arbitrary jerks running scared, threatened by your stabs at mastery. They had no more particular power or experience than another kid facing you down in a play war.

Don’t forget that. Every person who attempts to wave some type of banner of authority in your face is probably prickly-sweaty under the arms and hopped up on 90% couch fort bravado. Poke their pile of cushions with a stick and see if it tumbles down.

Daily Batman: The Joker’s going to take you down to Bonertown

Hella boners. Hella. He is super-good at it, even.

Unlikely G: Liberating Negative Space and Farewells, Tina Tuesday edition

Liberating negative space will never stop being a thing, no matter how much some people (read: Gorgeous George) may hate on it. Ain’t no shame in a name, Tina Fey!

Tina for Empire magazine. Here are two other images from the same photoshoot, you can click them to see them larger: they are brighter than this other shot but the pose or the cropping obscures the fact that she is writing that someone is “a bitch.” (Which makes me suspect the set of photos dates from around the time of Mean Girls.)

This concludes Tina Tuesday, farewell and adieu!

Daily Batman: 30 Rock Edition

(Reading Jack’s childhood list of life goals) Liz: There’s only one left — “Be friends with Batman.”
Jack: There’s still a couple of hours. Jonathan, could you get Adam West’s agent on the phone, please?

Adam West: (introducing Jack at his birthday party) I can’t stay long, I’m on a case. The Penguin is in town.
(the guests stare at him in silence)
Adam West: (gestures to Jack for money)
— 30 Rock, “Apollo, Apollo.”

Star Wars on 30 Rock: it is a Thing

Liz: I never get put on a jury. I wear my Princess Leia costume and they dismiss me immediately.

Liz: I don’t think it’s fair to ask me to be on a jury because I can read thoughts.
Judge: Dismissed!

But that was in Chicago. More recently, the character was called to jury duty in New York. This ensued.
Other references abound. Here’s a few.

(Liz Lemon talks with Jenna Maroney about being asked out by the good looking guy that works for MSNBC upstairs, whom they refer to as “The Hair”)
Liz: I had to say yes. I mean, he looked at me with those crazy handsome guy eyes. It was like the Death Star tractor beam when the Falcon —
Jenna: No, Liz! Do not talk about stuff like that on your date. Guys like that do not like Star Trek.
Liz: Wars — Star Wars!

Liz: (videochatting with boyfriend Floyd) Is that how far apart my eyes are?! I look like Admiral Ackbar!

edit: The Gentleman just found me this on thinkgeek.com: a kids’ Tauntaun sleeping bag.

I will not truly rest until I have one. It even has intestines decorating the lining. (I thought they smelled bad on the etc) Siiiiiiiiiigh.

“I ate weaker girls for breakfast” — Tina was one of the Mean Girls

Mr. Duvall: So, uh… how was your summer?
Ms. Norbury: I got divorced.
Mr. Duvall: Oh. My carpal tunnel came back.
Ms. Norbury: I win.
— Mean Girls, 2004.

Ms. Norbury: [after implying that an elderly biker is her boyfriend] I’m kidding. Sometimes older people make jokes too.
Damian: My nana takes her wig off when she’s drunk.
Ms. Norbury: Your nana and I have that in common.

“I ate weaker girls for breakfast. I really was a snarky girl. My whole thing was, if I really liked a guy and he had the audacity to like someone else instead of me, I would hate that girl and devote hours and hours of time to picking her apart and talking about her behind her back and canvassing my friends to dislike her. Just a waste of time, ridiculous, but when you’re going through it at that age, you’re making yourself sick with bile and hurting other people and their feelings.” — Tina Fey, Washington Post article “Tina Fey, Specs Appeal,” by William Booth (April 25, 2004).

Advice: Tina on specs

“Glasses make anyone look smarter. You put glasses on Woody Harrelson in Indecent Proposal and he’s an architect. You put a pair of glasses on Denise Richards and she’s a palaeontologist.”

“I don’t wear them very much in real life because I need them to see only far away. And I don’t wear them when I am dressed up, because then I would look like Tootsie.”

Music Moment: “Dancing With Myself,” cover by Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague – Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” cover by French collective Nouvelle Vauge with lead vox by Camille Dalmais, who I reckon we will see around these parts again, soon.

Oh, dancing with myself
Oh, dancing with myself
Well there’s nothing to lose
And there’s nothing to prove
I’ll be dancing with myself

If I looked all over the world
And there’s every type of girl
But your empty eyes
Seem to pass me by
Leave me dancing with myself

So let’s sink another drink
’cause it’ll give me time to think
If I had the chance
I’d ask the world to dance
And I’ll be dancing with myself

Oh, dancing with myself
Oh, dancing with myself
Well there’s nothing to lose
And there’s nothing to prove
I’ll be dancing with myself

Now I’m all disgruntled and pretty soon I won’t be the only one

Tina didn’t go on a huge amount of dates before she met Richmond, whom she married in 2001. “I went to a formal once in college where this guy came up to me — this really handsome, nice guy — and asked me to go to his fraternity’s formal. I said something like, ‘You are gay, right?’ He was like, ‘What? No!'” She pauses. “Then he came out — not during the date but almost that same night. His straight-dar was off.”

“Yeah, it’s tough being smart and sexy, too. I have to say, I’m really not that attractive. Until I met my husband, I could not get a date. I promise you it’s true. My husband Jeff Richmond saw a diamond in the rough and took me in.”

That quote warms my heart and makes me think of my husband. Then I remember that even though I wanted to believe that if I kept trying, he would remember the things I said and respect my fears and dreams and be there for me, and I would be safe and feel taken in, the reality was that he couldn’t make me feel special or taken care of if both our lives depended on it, and I always had to be the strong one, and nothing I said really seemed to make a dent or matter, and I kind of want to smash something against my head. I really shouldn’t write this early in the morning, I think.

Now I’m all disgruntled and pretty soon I won’t be the only one, I wager. Can I just apologize ahead of time? It’s like 7 a.m. I reckon I will have time to get back here and fix this before it publishes.

A confession

A confession: I have this recurring dream that I work for Tina Fey. She still has her old job as head writer for SNL in the dream and I’m always a lowly peon. Nonetheless, I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty amazing.

“If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.”

One of these dreams a few months ago went all the way to the end of a week, including watching the show from monitors in a different room, to the point that it was an afterparty situation and one of the host’s friends asked me out to some club to see a midget do stand-up, and I was all pumped, and as I exited the floor I noted that Tina Fey was still in her office working, but I totally wanted to go with the host’s cute friend and see the midget do stand-up, so I skedaddled anyway, although I felt compunctions of guilt about it.

Then we were walking down this very realistic skeezy street to the comedy club, and suddenly I thought, “Oh, no! This isn’t right, I should tell him I’m married,” and I woke myself up. Cheez-its! I totally missed seeing the midget, and maybe even smoochytimes with the guy! I kill my own game in dreams constantly. I need to think about this.

Math is hard, y’all

“I like to crack the jokes now and again, but it’s only because I struggle with math.”

Is Tina Fey gonna have to kung fu kick a bitch?

It happens: Tina Fey edition

Beer. It is a thing!

“In a study, scientists report that drinking beer can be good for the liver. I’m sorry, did I say “scientists”? I meant “Irish people.””

That’s a Hangover Sunday look if I ever saw one. Friendohs know of what I speak.

Hangover Sunday (n.): usually the morning after Saturday night Band Practice and adult libations, when one shuffles about in the double digits of the a.m. with vacant-zombie-eyes and puffy faces until Paolo gets on the skillet and fries up some resurrection.

It’s a Tina Tuesday!

Suddenly I’ve got a lot of little details to attend to today. And I’m elated to say that later in the day I’m going to rendezvous with the Gentleman for some Zombieland, soosh-bombasticos at the ol’ Gardino, and hopefully some very-much-needed heavy, deep, and real chitty chat, not to mention crispy Japanese beers big as my head. All this in mind, I’m handing over the reins for the day to the auto-posting feature.

Ladies and gentleman, the lovely and talented Tina Fey!

“I used to dress up in my best nightgown, which was a peach-colored rayon number with a matching robe, and I would drink soda out of a champagne glass in the dark while I watched The Love Boat. I pretended I was on the cruise. That was so classy.”