Totally forgot to share the pictures I took of Joan Jett at the concert in July. Look at these pictures and don’t have your mind blown by her timeless magnetism: I dare you. Click to enlarge.
We waited beginning at 2 pm for the concert, which started at 8:30. See, the concert was free at our county fairgrounds, and seating was restricted until an hour before the show, at which point it would be first-come-first-serve based on the line we formed. We got very comfortable with the people around us during our 6 1/2 hour wait.
I can see why the Deadheads and suchlike do it. I mean, those people are legitimately my friends now. They are of different ages and lifestyles and live in other states with other jobs and all we have in common is a shared feverish adoration of the baddest ass female rock star on the books — and we are actual friends. It was a pretty sick bonding experience.
While we had been waiting in line, roadies were doing sound checks, etc, and we got a huge surprise when Joan came out herself to test the setup. She sang us a quick “Cherry Bomb” chorus and the first half of “School Daze.” It was awesome and very unexpected, and I had thought at the time, “That is the coolest moment of my life.” But no. No-no.
Our seats were insane in their goodness.
We were front and center and she made a great deal of eye contact. I have never been more excited and terrified in my life as I was during the times when Joan Jett was looking in to my eyes. People, it’s a life-changer.
She was covering Iggy Pop and the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in this picture.
Kneel before Zod.
She threw my daughter a guitar pick. As we drove home late, late that night, kidlet, who as I have mentioned is going to start her own rock band someday called the Bad Apples, was chattering a mile a minute about the concert and how much fun she had even waiting in line for hours for our seats, and she kept repeating, “She looked right at me so many times. She likes me!” And I thought, “God, I don’t want me and kidlet to get hit by a truck or something for saying this to you, but both of us could die happy right now.”
What I’m saying is, seeing Joan Jett brings you closer to spiritual completeness.
*”Tuck me in and be my breakfast” line comes from Achewood, by Chris Onstad. It’s a good, solid line, and I wanted to properly attribute it to Onstad.
I can’t believe that I’m even raising the issue of immunizations in this public venue, because I know it’s like setting a loaded pistol on the table, but I have been feeling very, very strong Ways about a Thing that happened to me recently and this is my journal, and other than posting up my old Playboy paraphernelia, venting is what my journal is here for. I need to share. If it makes you hate me, then, well … we must henceforth agree to disagree on this matter and remain friends in all other ways. Also, you’re an idiot.
Last week, I had a tuberculosis test and clearance performed by my doctor to satisfy the requirements of a new job. (Result: I am not consumptive. Huzzah.) During that same week, I had a training in a nearby city to which several of my new colleagues and I drove together. In the car, I innocently remarked that I was waiting for the results of my TB test but joked that I was probably in the clear since I hadn’t visited Dickensian London lately.
One of my new colleagues — let’s call her Annette, although that is not her name — then snorted, folded her arms, and said, “I haven’t done that. I don’t believe in immunizations. They can’t make us get them.”
I chuckled nervously and said, “Pretty sure you have to do it in order to work with kids in this state. And it’s not an immunization, technically; it’s just a test for tuberculosis.”
“Tom [not her husband’s name] and I haven’t immunized any of the kids,” she said, because why should she respond to the logical thing I had just said? “You know that those shots cause autism, right?”
TB ward. My grandmother’s twin died in one of these.
This was the wrong thing to say to me because I’m close to several children with autism spectrum disorders and their mothers, and I do not personally know a single well-informed parent or guardian of an autistic child who buys this. Yes. Yes, autism is caused. It can’t possibly be due to genetic and neurological factors that we simply don’t yet understand.
I love Jenny McCarthy as much as the next guy (more, probably), but, come on: like I said, this might make you hate me, but there is zero — zero — evidence, as the American Association of Pediatricians, the American Medical Association, and even the American Psychiatric Association have repeatedly reported, that there is a link between autism spectrum disorders and vaccines required by public schools in most developed nations — required because they’re intended to protect our children from the communicable diseases that have, in the past, devastated infant and child populations. Let’s be scientific for about half a second, all right?
And this is a test. For tuberculosis. Who objects to that? Realistically, who in the name of easter seals objects to being simply tested for freaking consumption, in order that you do not spread it to little children who will die of it?
X-ray of pediatric tuberculosis in a near-morbid case. For the record. Jesus Christ, Annette.
At this stage of the conversation, I backed out, because when I’m offended, I freak out and shut down. However, another woman in the car said tentatively, “Annette, you know, whooping cough is really bad this year. There’ve been deaths.”
“I know, but I just don’t believe in immunizations.”
The driver and one of our immediate supervisors, who had minutely shook her head through most of the conversation, then said, “The school is actually asking for pertussis shot records during re-enrollment. Didn’t you get the kids their shots?”
“No. If everyone else has them, then it shouldn’t be a problem,” Annette snapped, and rolled her eyes. Because, you know, we’re the tiresome ones.
Wow.
I don’t believe in immunizations.
That’s okay, Annette — smallpox believes in You. What a straight-up cunt.
People landing on this by searching the internet for blogs about links between autism and vaccines in order to start a fight or brag about your opinion, you may officially commence hateration.
… But please know that if we don’t know each other and you start talking a bunch of bullshit about obscure studies that no major, legitimate sources support, and acting like you for-sure know a speck of a jot of a modicum about what causes autism, which people who’ve gone to college for over half your life cannot yet figure out and are dedicated to trying to concretely discover rather than accept mediocre malarkey in order to feel like there is a satisfactory scapegoat to make it all better, I am going to probably make fun of you. Not even kidding. I’m at a stage in my life where I’ve grown sick of sugar-coating my opinion of other people’s ignorance. Especially when it might make a child, whether I know him or not, gravely sick. Get ready for a whole lot of “go fuck yourself.”
Guess what I’m doing today? Going to see Joan mother-effing Jett, that’s what! For free.
Will we play baseball? A girl can dream.
My daughter wants nothing in the world but Joan Jett’s autograph on her Blackearts album liner. Kidlet conceals tiny black hearts in all her drawings to demonstrate her adoration: she’s a superfan. She goes way beyond knowing the words to “I Love Rock and Roll” or humming “Cherry Bomb.” She can discourse freely on which versions of particular singles she prefers.
She watches youtube footage of old Joan Jett concerts. We walk through Guitar Center so she can show me which guitars she is going to use when she forms her all-kid Joan Jett/Garbage/Runaways/No Doubt/Hole cover band, which she has named the Bad Apples*. She sings “Bad Reputation” in the bathtub.
She’s seven.
I’m hoping Joan is charmed by a child’s request and we get a chance to get that autograph, but hopefully just being in her vicinity will satisfy my little rock star’s heart. And thrill me, too.
This is what Joan Jett wore to her performance in 2008 at Artscape in Baltimore. If this is what she wears today, you guys can draw straws or arm wrestle to sort out who takes over the blog and raises my kid, because I will leave you all behind without a second glance.
*Once when the Go-Gos’ “Head Over Heels” was on the radio, kidlet seemed interested, so I said, “Would the Bad Apples cover this?” She looked at me like I was Grimace from Ronald Macdonaldland and said slowly, “It’s a rock band.”
I hope your mom has a good Mother’s Day. Sick burn! Except actually a fond wish …
Alanis Morissette — “The Heart of the House”
Shirley MacLaine and daughter Sachi.
You are the original template.
You are the original exemplary.
How seen were you, actually?
How revered were you, honestly, at the time?
Mirrormask.
Why pleased with your low maintenance?
Where was your ally,
your partner in feminine crime?
But, oh, mother, who’s your buddy?
Oh, mother, who’s got your back?
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher on Debbie’s birthday.
The heart of the house,
The heart of the house.
All hail the goddess.
Joanie and Christina.
You were “good-ol'”
You were “count on her ’til four a.m.”
You saw me run from the house
In the snow melodramatically.
Marvelous Jessica Walter as Lucille on Arrested Development. It is comforting to know there are many worse winkers in the world than me. (But I wager not a great many.)
But, oh, mother, who’s your sister?
Oh, mother, who’s your friend?
The heart of the house.
The heart of the house.
All hail the goddess.
Shirley and Sachi again, by Leo Fuchs. I adore pictures of the two of them together.
We left the men and we went for a walk in the gatineaus
And talked like women,
Like women to women would.
“‘Women to women would’ — where did you get that from?
Must’ve been your father, your dad.”
Audrey Hepburn and her mother before the Occupation.
I got it from you, I got it from you.
Do you see yourself in my gypsy garage sale ways?
In my fits of laughter?
In my tinkerbell tendencies?
In my lack of color coordination?
Probably like the fifth time I’ve used this picture. Bebe Buell and Liv Tyler, beautiful women and loving mothers both.
All my best wishes to the maternal among us of any age or gender. I don’t believe God intends any of us to be orphans. In the absence of a literal physical “mother,” I hope we are able to open our hearts to others in our lives that wish to help fill that role. And if you have still your original mom, won’t you call her or something? It’s a horrible and complex thing and that’s why none of us mothers are perfect, because it’s the first time you realize that you have to be this role first, and a person second, and though high-handed so-called instruction books abound, your own children arrive essentially manual-less. Cut mom a break and shoot her a thank you, maybe? As Panda says, file that under “just sayin’.” SeaQuest out!
Today is my kidlet’s birthday. It’s also the day of her class trip to the zoo, as it worked out, and thankfully the school at which I teach is on Spring Break, so it’s all come synchronicitously together in order that I could chaperone the trip and spend the day with her classmates and her. Which is where I’ve been all day. Unless …
When I was a kid, there were no less than three separate occasions on which I was supposed to take a field trip to the zoo with my school and got so excited the morning of the trip that I threw up and was told I could not go.
Consequently, my first zoo visit was in Berlin at age 18. No regrets, because it was a kickass experience, as well as informative: did you know that one of the zoo’s elephants was actually the first casualty of the Allied bombing of Berlin? Tell A Friend!
Well … that’s a pretty bleak fact, any way you look at it, really. Maybe keep it among us. I’m sorry I even said anything. Lately I’ve been blurting out awful things: I don’t know what’s going on with me.
As an example, I was next going to tell you that, growing up, besides vomiting my way out of zoo visits, I also got sick on my birthday two different times, and, in one instance, my mother briskly carried out the party in the backyard without me while I knelt on my bed and watched out the window of my room, but that’s bleak, too. Then I was going to say that I still throw up all the time when I’m nervous, upset, or excited, and it’s not an uncommon sight to see me roll down my window and have to puke out the car while behind the wheel, driving on my way to some place or person I feel Ways about that get my guts all knit up, but that’s even worse. Jesus wept, this is supposed to be about my kidlet’s birthday! I’m giving up.
Here’s hoping that tomorrow (today) finds me on the trip as a chaperone, and not so excited that I got sick and the teacher and my mom made me stay home. Again.
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — Goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
(God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. p. 129.)
Everybody’s always preaching on about what the world is coming to and how everything’s changed and children aren’t being raised right anymore, and perhaps that’s so in more cases than it used to be, but, when I am with my kidlet and her friends or I’m in the classroom teaching and interacting with children, I don’t generally find these bell-ringing end-of-days declamations of “oh-kids-these-days!” too be true at all.
If “kids” seem as a group to behave in a way that runs counter to previous societal standards, that is not reflective of their motivations, but of their parents’ lack. If they act out in a way they did not do twenty years ago, it’s because they’re being allowed to be fed bullshit from the television and other media by people too lazy to lift a finger to defend their minds from rot.
Children are still people, and as long as we continue to try to teach them to be compassionate and to love, they will have the same things in common with the people of history (who were never any of them that great to begin with, don’t be fooled) that every other generation has done: love, sex, passion, greed, honor, and the whole scope of personal emotions. Kids cannot be cut off from the birthright that is human feelings by technology — only we, and our attitudes, can cut them off from that.
This entry originally appeared on June 12, 2010 at 11:14 a.m.
Why wilt thou Examine every little fibre of my soul
Spreading them out before the Sun like Stalks of flax to dry
The infant joy is beautiful but its anatomy
Horrible Ghast & Deadly. Nought shalt thou find in it
But Death Despair & Everlasting brooding Melancholy
Thou wilt go mad with horror if thou dost Examine thus
Every moment of my secret hours. Yea I know
That I have sinned & that my Emanations are become harlots
I am already distracted at their deeds & if I look
Upon them more Despair will bring self murder on my soul
O Enion thou art thyself a root growing in hell
Tho thus heavenly beautiful
to draw me to destruction
(William Blake, excerpt from “Part I: Enmion and Tharmas,” in Vala, or, The Four Zoas: the torments of Love and Jealousy in the death and judgment of Albion the Ancient Man.)
All photos are screencaps from a collaborative short film put out by Lulamagazine and the ubiquitous UK-and-now-THE-WORLD clothing store Topshop. Here is a linky to the video, which is unusual and beautiful and freaky, but as you are watching this artistic short film remember it is designed to sell faux-Bohemian low-quality overpriced clothes that will be out of style in six months to impressionable and likely self-loathing young women with eating disorders and disposable income. The fashion industry is so cruel with its kindness that I go back and forth on appreciation and hate.
I’m sorry, I went to the mall earlier to pick up some comfortable summer shoes with my grandmother and now I’m in a low mood. Nothing puts me out of sorts like that snake nest. Like, everyone is slithering over the top of each other and accidentally biting their own tails and dropping money on shit they don’t need, finances they have gained from the jobs they keep specifically to make a weekend trip to a goddamned mall and drape shiny fabrics over the viper shitpit of the system so it looks all pretty and coordinated while they sip complacently from some kind of frapped coffee bullshit drink packed with sugar and empty calories that they store in the cupholder of their child’s stroller. Their kids are with them, of course, because children must be taught to want made-up food like chicken nuggets and aspire to own over three pair of shoes. Seriously, I want to watch it burn, burn, burn.
I know that my Emanations are become harlots.
I think I’m going to go take ten and paint with the kidlet or something.
I said before that writing about my dreams was too disturbing, but that is a cop-out. This dream I had about two years ago. Its winter setting was emphatically a part of its ominous overtones.
I dreamt that I was in a frozen town with my daughter, who was very young in the dream, and a man I had used to be with. I became separated from them during some type of dreary, macabre parade. There was something wrong and sinister about it, but I wasn’t sure what, and I was caught up in looking for my daughter and the man.
Winter Carnival, 1909.
The procession of people were all bundled up in raggedy black clothes, like Victoriana gone to seed, and the “floats” were black carriages making tracks down a main street in the snow.
As I paced the street looking for the rest of my party, blowing on my hands and calling out for my daughter and the man, I saw a pulpy mess in the road and smeared, reddish-purple blood and tissue in the ruts left by the carriages.
They’d run over something that I had the impression was small and helpless but also somehow dear and marine, like an otter or seal or something. Each carriage kept rolling on, continually running over and through the remains of whatever this now bisected and strewn-out creature had once been.
I tried to escape the image by going down different side alleys in the frozen town, but they all lead back to the same main street. The sight of the gore and entrails against the snow was chilling and horrifying on a deep-down level which was out of proportion to the event, like as if it had some weighty significance that my mind was shying away from fully realizing. I woke myself up with the kind of shock and sweat that suggested it had been a terrible nightmare, but I could not, when recollecting the details of the dream, understand why it upset me so much.
I never thought about it until just now, but I guess it must have been my daughter in the street. I think that’s what my mind kept pulling me back from seeing.
This has not been an at-all uplifting or illuminating “Winter of my discontent” entry. But it does represent the second time I’ve attempted a Dreamtime entry. The first one was about a hanged woman. Based on that, you may think that I’m not doing so hot on the Dreamtime sharing, but that’s actually about the usual caliber of my dreams.
This post originally appeared, arranged differently, on December 31, 2009 at 10:35 a.m.
Lot’s Wife, 1989. David Wander.
As soon as they had been brought outside, he was told: “Flee for your life! Don’t look back or stop anywhere on the Plain. Get off to the hills at once, or you will be swept away.”
The Lord rained down sulphurous fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah (from the Lord out of heaven). He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil.
But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.
Genesis 19:17-23, 26.
It’s good to learn lessons from the past, it’s wise not to pretend it never happened, but I am concerned that too much auld lang syne will fuck your world apart, you know what I mean? So take it easy on yourself with the nostalgia today. I am going to try.
All you can do, all you can ever do, is keep going forward.
This entry was originally posted on Jan 19, 2010 at 6:02 pm. It contains the fourth of my New Years’ Resolutions for 2010. Over the next several Flashback Fridays, I will be taking them out, dusting them off, and seeing how well I followed through. I do not anticipate it always being pleasant, but the truth can’t be.
A confession: When I was a kid, I kind of always wanted to be the Joker. The whole Catwoman thing mainly started because I knew that a girl Joker wouldn’t fly. I remember vividly that when I explained this to my older cousin, he patiently said, “Well, what about Wonder Woman?” and I threw my hands up in disgust: clearly, he was missing the point entirely. I wanted to be the guy across the street from this kid (below), staring him down from my front porch, smirking and wearing a purple suit. Maybe smoking, too. You know. For maximum badass effect. “In your face, Smarmy McSavesalot — this is what I think of The System!”
I think this career goal still haunts me and is responsible for my general dissatisfied lack of commitment as a working adult. How you going to find me dutifully plugging away in a cubicle when I promised my babyself always to rage against the machine?
So, putting that insight together with Ben Okri’s quote, I guess what this chain of thought is telling me is that I need to learn to keep my eyes open for signs and portents of a destiny that can dovetail with my dreams.
I cannot believe that I was meant to go either rudderless through this world, or chained in a galley, desperately wheeling my arms around for a ship I already hate, which is bound only to sink no matter whether I keep paddling or get consistently whipped for refusing to row. I won’t believe that. I can’t accept that that is the plan for me or for anyone.
E’s fourth resolution for 2010: Look for signs. Keep hope alive. And, really, there is no reason not to wear a trimly-tailored purple suit while I do it.
Reality Check: I did my best on this one, really far better than I did on making a joyful noise. Next year, I will just have to keep on looking for more hope and signs. I ditched the job I disliked and work now for far less financial reward, but with much more passion and satisfaction. What I think I gained back this year, particularly in the face of almost fatal illness, was some of the credulity that must predate a quest for hopeful signs. My dream has been fulfilled, as Mr. Okri suggested, in ways I did not expect. I have grudgingly begun to place more belief in miracles again. And that is encouraging.
Final note: When I originally posted this last January, Wrasseler left me this lovely poem-prose comment that I wanted to be sure to add to this post now.
Signs in Space that is not Space do not appear as the signs we Approach and Contemplate. Signs in Time become mathematical. Then signs take meanings. Our hearts and minds move mountains through History. That’s a long way.
Everybody Else lives in Time. In the Renaissance Garden of Statutes turn past your liberties. Continue on toward your Statute of Limitations. Your Limitations are not the sign. The sign is not beyond your Limitations.
Dreams making history do not lose Time. They let Time lose them. This is the sign. Woman as Joker. How natural. Natural History. Another sideline for the woman who Time lost.
The sign is not beyond my limitations. Thanks again for that, dude!
This entry was originally posted on November 10, 2009 at 10:21 pm. Some pictures and more action descriptions have been added.
This post was originally accompanied by screen captures from a spotty YouTube video. I’ve capped the extras from Goonies myself since then, so I’ve got much clearer versions now. Also at the bottom you may enjoy lovely bonus caps of the madness.
Back to the original.
The Goonies are good enough for Cyndi Lauper.
Today after I picked up kidlet from kindergarten, we jetted down to Ceres for some gloomy day movie cheer. Clue strangely put us to sleep but then Miss D, kidlet, and I watched us the crap out of some Goonies. We watched every single feature it had. Maybe even to our detriment.
Steven Spielberg has a cameo and Cyndi Lauper wrestles the octopus that vanished from the Goonies final cut — oops.
One of the features we watched, which I'd never seen before in its … I'm not sure what to call it? totality?, was a two-part music video put together by director Richard Donner and theme songstress/my fantasy fairy godmother Cyndi Lauper, with a cameo by producer Steven Spielberg, to promote the film. I don't even have words for the surreality of watching the video. It was really something. I will not soon forget it. These are my neutral words.
The video features
World Wrestling Federation pro-wrestlers André the Giant, Captain Lou Albano, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Wendy Richter, The Fabulous Moolah, The Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, Freddie Blassie; Steven Spielberg; The Goonies cast (except for Kerri Green, Anne Ramsey, Joe Pantoliano, Robert Davi and John Matuszak*); and the relatively unknown Bangles as a group of female pirates. Roseanne Barr appears as the “sea hag”. Lauper’s mother appears as “Cyndi’s mother”, reprising her role from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”.
*The lead cast members from the film who do not appear in this video are those playing Andy, Ma Fratelli, and the Fratelli brothers.
The plot runs like this: Cyndi’s folks run a Mom and Pop gas station that has fallen on tough times. They are packing up and ready to come west to Californny or some such to start a new life and meet Peter Fonda, when they think they have customers! Is the station saved?? Wonderful!
Psych. Turns out it’s the creditors. The gas station is being bought out by villains from the WWF, each attired as a different weird stereotype. Unfortunately, they also have dialogue.
Cyndi and her brother? friend? and sister? his wife? are helping Mom and Pop (Cap’n Lou) pack up the ol’ place when the action begins.
The nouveau riche, stereotyped creditors chew up the scenery and generally set up quickie symbols of their wealth, such as a Benihana-type joint in the middle of the parking lot, which many consider the international sign of good taste and refinement, some to the point of exclusion. (Do not even try to talk dimsum on rollerskates to them; they will not listen.) The hibachi flows like wine and the wine is snorted like cocaine. In fact, there is no wine. It is just cocaine. Off-camera.
The skeleton and she scream at each other and her hair blows. It is a deep and fractured commentary on the intersection of orgasm, death, and bad ’80’s video special fx.
Cyndi discovers a secret cave behind a painting of their grand-ancestor, where she encounters the Goonies, who help her decode a map she lifted off a dead guy — real fuckin’ nice, Cyn.
The we get a nice long look at the same clips America had been seeing for several months in the Goonies trailer, and you think maybe it’s done? but no. Suddenly, some pirates show up (psst, it is the WWF guys IN DISGUISE — could it all be a dream, but a real adventure, too, a la The Wizard of Oz?), and Roseanne Barr. Oh my god, nightmare combination! The Bangles are there, too, but they do not try to sing.
In the chase that ensues, Cyndi stops real quick for some hibachi, creating a prevalent and provocative ongoing theme in the video.
Perhaps this is meant to make us reflect on the marketing of foreign cuisine in America, or on materialism and the ease with which an ordinary item common to one country can acquire peculiar clout in another country. Or perhaps it is merely included in order to set up a joke that is some straight racist garbage: ie, the following picture’s caption.
The pirates and the sea hag enslave the kids at murky tasks like, um, stirring big pots, and force Cyndi to dress like a Floridian prostitute while carrying buckets and singing (they do not allow her to stop singing even once).
Cyndi and her friends manage to overthrow the pirates and get away with some loot from the ship, but the “cheatin’ creditors” will not accept it as payment for Mom and Pop’s debt on the shop. Not even when she repeatedly bites it to prove its value! I know, right? If only she had offered them some fresh, dope funky fun hibachi.
As it is, Cyndi grows weary of attempting to convince the creditors to accept her jewels as payment, and whistles as one only does for a taxicab or deus ex machina. And what is it going to be?
Why, it’s Andre the Giant, and I am pretty sure he is literally still wiping coke from under his nose when he first appears! He beats up and chases away the creditors, which means the debt is legally and officially cleared forever, duh, and the video ends with this triumphant shot.
Oh, my god, I want that to happen to me every day after I die. I like to believe in an afterlife, unless I am in a particularly foul and doubtful and wobegone mood, and of course Andre the Giant is there waiting for me so we can finally hang out and stuff, and I hope so fervently that every single day when I greet him in Heaven he scoops me up and we cheer and do ’80s fistpumps in the air. It’s gonna be sick.
So here’s the video if after a report on all that insanity you need fuller confirmation of its existence.
Bonus caps:
Cyndi struggles with the octopus who never made it in to the theatrical release but was apparently still considered an important enough plot point at the time of this video’s production that Spielberg and Donner made sure to include him.
Stuck on a log, Cyndi asks Spielberg for help via the magic of television screens. He basically says he does not care, he is only here to remind people that hey-hey-hey, Stephen Spielberg is involved in this picture so you should run out and see it just as fast as your thickening Dorito-and-Pepsi-lovin’ legs can carry you. He signifies his essential non-interest in what’s happening by not removing his sunglasses despite being indoors and ostensibly watching television.
Captain Lou laments to his long-lost dead ancestor about the state of the gas station. But it’s going to be okay because …
Secret treasure inside the hidden cave! Happens all the time!
Goonies does not have any fart jokes, but the “Goonies R Good Enough” video does. As is evidenced by the sign in the below cap.
I say again, for all the casual vulgarity of youth as young as elementary school-aged and as old as seventeen that characterizes the scripts of both Goonies and E.T. (and their rather heartwarming insistence that these two age groups consistently interact and save the world), the movie Goonies does not have even one single fart joke. In a movie with as many other dick, breath, sex, and LCD body-function jokes as Goonies, that is pretty anomalous. I’m going to call it happenstance. I doubt it was on purpose.
WWF Pirates hunt for Cyndi Lauper. Recall that they have been dispatched by Roseanne Barr, assisted by the Bangles.
1. WWF.
2. Cyndi Lauper.
3. Roseanne Barr and the Bangles.
80’s Trifecta!!
Cyndi singing in aforementioned Floridian prostitute getup under the insistence of the Bangles, Roseanne, et al.
The octopus himself. Farewell, dude, we hardly knew ye. We’ve only seen ye in weird television cuts that were edited for time and had the master with the alternate ending. (Which Data still refers to in the released ending.)
Finally, my secret crush from this movie may be reported to be Data, because I squeal when he comes on screen, but really deep down it’s actually:
Martha Plimpton. Her and Jan Brady can come live with me and finally be appreciated the way they deserve. Oh, Martha Plimpton. Have my nearsighted, sarcastic blonde babies. Won’t you please? We’ll find a way.
Great. Now what am I supposed to name my first album?
alternate joke based on a joke I made in 2004: This reminds me of that time when Frank Zappa took all the good names like Moon Unit and Dweezil for his kids and I was stuck with the Bible.
alternate joke with more brevity but no personal touch: Backing vocals by Heywood Jablome.
I didn’t want to retread the first joke because I feel weird stealing from myself, plus I had to manhandle it too much to make it work for this post (the original joke referred to my daughter, who was in utero, and had been shorter and far more topical). As for the latter, it not only did not include a small, personal way of tying us all together as poster and readers, but it more importantly repeated the word “blow” too much for my taste, since it just appeared in the picture already. Ergo, “what am I to call my album,” which had instinctively been my joke when I saved the thing to begin with, won.
Aren’t you pleased as punch by this glimpse in to my ultra-sophisticated process?
This post originally appeared on Dec 2, 2009, at 9:57 PM.
Grand news. The parent-teacher conference went wonderfully!, beyond my wildest dreams!, and I think I may even have snowed kidlet’s teacher in to buying that I am an adult, an elaborate new con on which I’ve been working, whose growing success at the grocery, church, and among new acquaintances is beginning to perturb me and make me check for crow’s feet.
On the way back from picking up the kidlet and Special K from the park where they played while I was at the conference because I was busy conferencing on top secret conferencey shit, Katohs and I were discussing all things fantastic, adorable, unique, and vintage-ish, as we are wont to do, and she said, “I came to a point in my life where I realized I was never going to get to be Zooey Deschanel, and I was like, ‘What’s the point in going on?'”
I replied, “But that’s okay. All we can do is try to inject a little Zooey into each day, like be inspired by her energy!” advancing one of my typical over-optimistic, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, hippie-crazy-go-nuts solutions that often barely even mean anything in the final analysis. When I am up against a tough point in conversation with a friendoh who is downohs, I sometimes morph into Dharma from Dharma and Greg — cryptic comments about the universe and energy and destiny just fall out of my mouth. But I think, actually, this time I managed to string together some pretty good advice!
I think we women often admire a quality in another woman and somehow, whether it is something ugly and atavistic, or something society has trained us to do that we can more easily shake off, we want that quality for ourselves instead of simply accepting with grace and admiration what a lucky thing it is that that other woman has the quality we like and how fortunate we have been to experience it. We are a covetous bunch, we ladies. “If I could sing like her; if I had hair like hers; if only I had her body; her style; her car or career or cake serving set…”
“…then?” What? Your life would be perfect? Never! There has never been a perfect, easy, or charmed life in the history of EVER! We are wasting such chances with our jealousy and poisonous reaction to a standout quality in another gal, blinded by our instant avarice: when something sticks out in your mind about another woman, ignore the negative instinct and instead seize a vital opportunity to connect with a woman, as two people. We need all to work on this.
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source
We have to love each other first, because then loving ourselves will come next, and then when you have so much going on already, it’s only natural that the love of whatever man or woman strikes your fancy will follow! (See, if the whole admire-other-women-and-love-them-for-the-reflection-of-the-creator-in-them-that-is-also-in-you bit didn’t work, then hopefully the it-will-make-your-crush-crush-back bit will. I’m new-agey but also very sneaky!)
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)
None of this is to say Katohs was jealous. She was expressing admiration for Zooey Deschanel. But I think it’s interesting that our culture has conditioned a young woman, especially even one as bright and categorically outstanding as Special K, to, when she sees a woman she admires and idolizes, even joke about wanting to be her, rather than just be able to be like her. Weird people we all are or have been made to be. I’m trying to change, personally. I’m hoping it’s something that can be a choice.
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)
Other highlights: over lunch at Thai House, I introduced Katohs to the concept and history of “spoonerisms;” kidlet told me flatly that she was going to marry Jude Law, and, when she did, I would need to build her a house for them to live in (knowing Jude Law and the rumors I have heard of his skeeviness this is entirely possible and I guess I had better start saving); and Special K and I determined that it is mainly okay to slap a baby if the baby is really, really annoying.
No babies were slapped in the writing of this self-audit.
edit: So this is the promised Flashback Friday post that picks up the thread of thought in the 69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 5 post. It’s all about rejecting the modern standard of cattiness and pointless avarice and trading them for cooperation and admiration. I mean, Jesus Christ, we are playing right in to the hands of the machine with this bullshit behavior, ladies. If you’re all bound up in bitching each other out, then you’re not paying attention to what’s going on around you, which means you’re not trying to change anything, which means everything can stay its shitty same self, which means the machine wins. Do you see? Revolution! — won’t you please help me do it up right?
It seems to me that despite all our claims of girl power and sisterhood women are still our own worst enemies, and I do not have to ponder or prod at the why of that: it is manifestly so much easier to lay the blame for a situational upset or emotional turmoil at some other chick’s feet than to examine your own self.
Scanned by yours truly.
“We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly, Pogo creator, comic legend). You know?
And so we fruitlessly turn against each other instead of joining forces and really making new and great things happen, and the more often we do that, the less is ever truly resolved, and women end up with all these doubts and neuroses that we’ve unfairly placed on ourselves. We are all doing ourselves a bad turn. Like, why, on meeting someone equal to you in strength, would you need to best them instead of teaming up and being friends? Wouldn’t they understand you better than anyone else you’ve ever dealt with, and wouldn’t you better benefit from mutual friendship than from facing off? What a horrible instinct, to destroy what’s like you in order to be sure you are still alone and “The Best.”
Wait, I feel like I’ve written something about this before … I want to say it involved a picture of Zooey Deschanel looking twee with a pink ribbon.
(three or so minutes later)
Okay, found it. It’ll be today’s Flashback Friday, and it’ll be posted directly following this WW Day 5, inspired by and related to this post. And actually it works great because that was about my first parent-teacher conference for kidlet last year, and I just went to her first parent-teacher conference for this year yesterday.
But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
(Kerouac, Jack. On the Road, 1951.)
Won’t you please go crazy just once in a while.
My daughter and I went to the downtown branch of our public library today, to which I had not been in epochs. A year, at least.
I had to buy two more bags so we could carry the books, and my bag ripped so we were drag-assing to the car, both of us weighted down by several bags each. The trunk was stuck, and propping the ripped bag on my hip in order to try and really pull up on the lid sent half the books sliding like an avalanche over my shoulder because of the arch my body was in, where they tumbled behind me to the ground and christ-knows-why cartwheeled in to the smack middle of the drive. Why not?
Kidlet instinctively darted out to retrieve them, so I was in a panic shouting “No!”, throwing my head around to look for cars and warning her, “Get back in position!,” “position” being facing her door, with both hands on the car — yes, I know it is a seemingly fascist thing to teach a child to memorize, but it keeps her semi-secure while I try to juggle crap with my hands full in a parking lot. Today was a case in point. As soon as I’d managed to fumble the keyfob into unlock, I told her to get in the car, and as soon as her car door closed, let out a very heartfelt, “Fucking fuck!” Then I picked up the books. Twist ending!
the kitty nightlight keeps it on-theme.
If you think all of that’s chaotic, farcical, and vulgar, you should have seen us in the library. Think, “Jackie Chan meets the Three Stooges, with special guest writer Quentin Tarantino.”
A portion of my haul is above. Snagged a few more gems for the Wonder Woman research and a couple Hammett novels for funsies; also Far Arden and a new book by Elizabeth Kostova, who wrote The Historian (a yearly read). I almost picked up Embroideries but I’ve almost literally just reread Persepolis and I decided to wait until next time. Does anyone else find to your disappointment that when you read a great deal of someone else’s art and writing, it begins to accidentally spill over in to your own, or am I the only hack?
Anyway, it’s all at your Local Library!
Also, I wanted to show off this improvised bookcover for Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. My California copy has gone saucily topless up front for around a half a decade (thus prompting the purchase of my much more gently used Oregon copy) and I could brook no more. I decided that, after eighteen years, I no longer really needed the Kirkus and New York Times, etc, reviews at the front telling me the book was worth a look, and, knowing the dedication already — to Stan Rice, her husband —, I flipped to the first page and started duct-taping the front ten-odd junk pages together. This made a stiff enough cover so that, when I lie in bed curled on my side to read, the force of my hand holding the thicker part of the book does not wear and worry and rip away at the front any longer, saving the book from further separating from the spine.
I’m pretty proud of my shitty repair job. The spine itself has always been fine, so it as not as though the book would be anonymous when shelved or sidewise-viewed, the only ways it would matter in a search, but I wrote “The Witching Hour” and “Anne Rice” on the duct-tape cover anyway because it felt right.
I’ve been unable to write lately because I’ve been in the hospital. Several hospitals. My liver and kidneys got sick of my crap and spontaneously agreed to stage a coup and attempt to abdicate; I had no idea they felt so strongly about disliking mashups, but I’ve promised to consider their opinions in the future. Looking back, it seems like such a silly thing to argue over. I think they feel the same. Anyway, I was jammed out to San Francisco for a bit, where the nicest cabal you can possibly imagine of highly intellectual medical overlords who are so smart and powerful that they get to swap people’s body parts around actually met up and voted to toss me a new liver so I could continue to be the body that rocks the party.
Kristen McMenamy by Francois Nars
Preparations began for the transplant to ensue, but it all went on unbeknownst to me since I was mainly out like a trout for quite a couple days there and was pretty much wholly at the mercy of a luckily kind system — things went well for me, what with me spending my life being a good citizen E and paying in to this health care system and all. I do not know how it would have gone otherwise, but I thank God, truly, that from the moment I finally checked myself in to the hospital two weeks ago, until today at 1:30 when they released me, I’ve been taken care of with world-class speed, compassion, and totality.
via b&wtf on the tumblr
See, I’d just thought I had flu or food poisoning or something for a few days at the beginning so I had been woefully barfing it out and collapsing in exhaustion at home and figuring on waiting until the weekend’s end to go see my regular doc; when I couldn’t stop throwing up and finally threw in the towel and agreed to go to a quasi-emergency room several Sundays ago, they all freaked out when I got there and said my liver was failing, which I knew must be true when I couldn’t really wake up for about three or four days and came around in SF and realized I’d basically almost died. I mean, I know that with Lost having ended, I would have at least died with my curiosity satisfied on that front, but I was kind of hoping to see how the mysteries of the rest of life shook out, watch my kid grow up; you know, sentimental shit like that.
Right about the time I woke up in the City and started trying to piece shit together, my own organs rethought throwing the doors open to a stranger and began to make a slow, halting comeback over the last 14-15 days. The cabal agreed that this was great news and I would rock the party much better and perhaps longer with my O.G. body parts in tact, as long as they promised to stay put and eat their vegetables this time. They took me off their too-cool-to-quit-school list, but it did remind me to harangue everyone I know about becoming an organ donor. I’ve been one since 2001. (Blows on fingernails.) No big deal. Be a hero, dudes. Anyway, Promoetheus, your liver is safe again — for now. See you after breakfast. Yeah, I just called myself a harpy. The analogy got away from me in a hurry.
I was bounced back to a hospital in my home town as things improved, which is when the deep boredom set in, but my friends and family were incredible and visited with me for hours every day. Their support in both San Francisco, which for a lot of my stay I was mainly unaware, and back here at home played a huge part in my being able to cheerfully and ably plow through the bizarre obstacle course I’ve been running this past half-month. Also, I’ve never thought hospital food was that bad. I kind of dug it and knew all the servers’ names.
Every morning, I woke up early, put on mascara and lipstick, and pinned flowers from my bouquets in my hair. I joked with the phlebotomists and the transporters and the nurses, and walked all over the hospital, getting off at floors and halls in which I did not belong and striding around confidently in my gown like I had every reason to be doing what I was. Once, in an elevator, an old man and his wife told me if I was trying to break out, I needed to change clothes. I agreed I was pretty conspicuous. I would wear one gown the proper way and use a second gown as a sort of robe. They gave me non-skid hospital socks but Panda Eraser collects those so I stashed those in my bag to take home and sported my busted-ass flip-flops all over the place. The trick in the hospital, like anywhere, was to act as though you were completely authorized to be doing everything you did at all times.
Don’t take this to mean I was a rebel. I actually went out of my way to be the best little patient ever. I did everything they told me and more, smiled and thanked everyone by name, and assured nurse after nurse repeatedly that I was a “tough stick” and they were doing a great job trying to lay that IV line. From a glance at my arms, I am afraid I look just like the lifelong chasers I was puzzling over in discussing Mr. Burroughs two weeks ago. Tough stick means I apparently have dodgy veins. To say a lot of people took a stab at me is to put it lightly. My track marks are freaky. I ended up with some IVs in some really weird places because every time they placed one in a usual spot, something would happen and my body would duck and dive out of it and chaos would ensue. My bruises pose a puzzle to anyone who looks at me. See? I’m so not cut out to be a heroin addict.
All in all, I got pretty in to the swing of things, hospital-routine-wise, and I actually don’t know what I’ll do when I wake up tomorrow at 5 a.m. and there is no one there to weigh me and suck my blood and count my heartbeats. It’s like, it’s cool to send me home and all, but it’s my blood, dudes, remember? That stuff you have positively not been able to get enough of for two weeks now? You’re turning your back on it now, after all that obsession? You loved that shit. Is this how it ends? No takers? I bet people around here aren’t even going to get excited when I pee. No applause, no saving my urine in cups, no measuring it, no nothing — seriously? I’m just not sure how I’ll feel special.
I guess what I’m saying is, if there are any vampires out there who like watersports and don’t mind a love object who needs a lot of rest, holla.
I was finally sprung this afternoon. I have a lot of catching up to do, but the experience — as genuinely grueling, unexpected, and unwelcome as it was — certainly gave me a lot to contemplate. I’d been considering shutting things down around here because my original plan had been a yearlong self-audit and that’s been up for a few weeks now, but my incredibly long amounts of time to do nothing but think in a hospital bed made me realize my audit will never end and I have so much more left to think about that I couldn’t possibly quit now.
I look forward to a continuing future of malarkey, shenanigans, tomfoolery, jacknapery and maybe even a little monkey shines. Inexpressibly glad to be back and please join me!
addendum: Right before I signed the paperwork to go, one of my many, many doctors was chatting with me and handed me a stack of reports from my many, many blood draws and urine cultures, and casually commented, “Oh, and you have e. coli.” Now, I overlooked this at the time in favor of being outside for more than 30 seconds in a row as soon as possible and not even strapped to a gurney to boot, but it’s beginning to, you might say, “nag” at me. Isn’t e. coli kind of … pretty bad? I don’t pretend to be a medical expert but I seem to remember everything I’ve ever heard about e. coli being pretty bad. I’ll be looking that up now.
This entry originally appeared on January 31, 2010 at 3:13 PM.
By laser314, Amsterdam.
Answer: No.
Last week, my daughter’s friend and schoolmate told her that she had a “secret.” The secret was that, whenever her older brother got out of the shower, if no one else was home, they would have sex.
My daughter and her friend are both 5.
After my daughter told me this secret, which she rightly suspected seemed “off,” I turned the car around and drove immediately back to her school, where I tracked down the girls’ teacher and told her what the friend had told my daughter. I made no judgment in my retelling as to whether I thought this was true or not, just reported what had been said and put it in her hands. The next day, the friend’s mother picked her up from school, so I assumed things were okay. The day after that, it was the girl’s grandfather. She hasn’t been back to school since then. So I guess it was true. A five year old girl should have secrets about magic and dreams and glittery wands, about easter baskets and kisses on the cheek under the slide, not being penetrated by her brother’s penis when there is no one around to keep her safe. This is more to me than just the loss of innocence, this is a complete obliteration of it, the sucking dry of a life that was only newly struck when it got pulled down.
I have spent the week trying to wrap my mind around the entire thing, while dealing with the questions of my daughter, who still dimly feels she is under a cloud of trouble or suspicion for having this secret with her friend. She has asked me why kids can’t have sex, why family members can’t have sex, and why her friend’s brother would want to hurt her; whether her friend will still want to be her friend when she comes back to school, if she comes back at all, what is going to happen to her friend now, and why her friend cannot stay with her parents if it was her brother who was the problem. Dealing with her questions and keeping her close during the day has occupied my mind. But it’s not so easy at night, when she is asleep, and I am asking myself some of the same questions.
I did not believe there were evil people, just evil decisions, until a friend of mine died violently. It changed my view. I don’t think evil is an excuse, or a disability. I still think it’s a choice, but it’s a more overarching and wholly tarring choice than I originally perceived. For a long while after my friend died, I was obsessed with crime and criminals, afraid to leave my house, dreading that the same thing would happen to me. My daughter’s birth came within a few years of my friend’s death, and I think — I know — that my paranoia increased. After my marriage and move to another state, I isolated myself and my daughter completely in our house and told myself I was finally safe and happy.
Neither of these was true. There is no way to escape a dark place that isn’t a physical reality, but a pit in your mind, that keeps dragging you back down. I’ve done my best, I think. I recognized my unhappiness, I stopped running, I emerged, and I took my daughter with me, but to what end?; I’ve brought her to the only place I’ve ever lived and actually felt safe, put us both back out in the sunshine, so to speak, and now evil is already intruding in her short life. It makes a moment when she will be taken from me by some less-than-human person seem inevitable. It haunts me, it suffocates me, this idea. It is breathtakingly terrifying. I really don’t know what to do.
That’s all I can say for now. It’s too upsetting.
edit: What I’ve come to since then is this. I cannot control other people (yet — as soon as I get Professor X to lift this block, I am gonna rule the crap out of all y’all, so just a heads-up; don’t worry, I’ll be mainly benevolent) , but I can control how I respond to the events in my life, and I can control how I prepare my daughter for the good and the bad in life. My main goal now is to make sure she understands essential safety precautions and recognizes dicey situations without descending in to the prickly-sweated paranoia of her mother.
As an example, the unlock button on my key fob is going bad and when it took a couple clicks to open the doors not too long ago, I said to Miss D, “I really need to get it fixed because what if someone is chasing me through a parking lot and that’s the night it finally gives up the ghost?” So I guess I want the kidlet to be less like me and more like herself, only a safe but still innocent one. So again, to answer the question posed in the graffiti: “Can I inoculate my child against the looming darkness? No.”
Drop Dead Fred (Ate De Jong, 1991), featuring madcap redhead Rik Mayall, who makes it all better and doesn’t condescend to mollycoddle while he does it. I would be okay with him cutting my hair in my sleep, or wiping snot affectionately down my cheek.
I could use him, I think, right now … could definitely use him. Walking down memory lane watching this movie was like being repeatedly hit in the stomach with a club carved of ice. (Is that possible? Someone get back to me if it is.) Awesome. Check it out.
Elizabeth’s world has been turned upside down. Her marriage appears to be over following her discovery that he has cheated on her; but she simply can’t stop loving him. In her misery, her imaginary childhood friend Fred reappears, having been previously locked away from her.
Elizabeth stays with her mother; quite cold to Elizabeth, she intends to put Elizabeth back with Charles, but, in the meantime, makes her into a younger double of herself. Elizabeth works to get Charles back into her life, even turning up at a party (with Fred) that Charles is at. Despite part of Elizabeth being overjoyed at seeing Fred again and remembering their fun care-free times together, all he ever seems to do for Elizabeth is cause trouble.
Elizabeth returns to Charles and starts taking medication* to rid herself of Fred. It is only when taking the last pill that she realizes Charles hasn’t changed at all and that Fred is really the only person she can trust. Unfortunately, the only way she can truly [confront her mother and husband] and rid herself of her fears is to lose Fred for good by realizing she doesn’t need him any longer. (the imdb)
I’m a loner! I’m a crazy, wide-eyed loner on a doomed space mission to Venus to battle the three-headed mega-beast! But on the way back, I caught Cornflakes Disease.
Fred: Why don’t we harpoon Charles straight through the head, drag him back to the apartment, and hit him with a hammer until he agrees to come back?
Elizabeth: “Harpoon him through the head?” That won’t work, Fred.
Fred: Why not? How many times have you tried it?
Fred: I can’t believe we left the party so soon. And there was so much wine left to spit around the place!
Elizabeth: I got upset.
Fred: “I got upset.” God, you’re so stupid. You never leave a party until the very, very end.
Elizabeth: Oh, really?
Fred: Yeah, really!
Elizabeth: What about Cinderella? Remember what happened with her?
Fred: No, I don’t remember what happened “with her.” I deliberately forgot all about her. Uck. She made me puke. I remember the ugly stepsisters, though — they were great!
Young Elizabeth: Did they live happily ever after?
Polly: Of course, Elizabeth.
Young Elizabeth: How do you know?
Polly: Because, she was a good little girl. If she would have been naughty, then the Prince would’ve run away.
Young Elizabeth: What a pile of shit.
Wow [points up]. Cobwebs.
Snotface, look — ink! Let’s write something on the carpet. I know, how about “Mother sucks“?!
I don’t love you because love is for girls and girls are disgusting.
*On the subject of the medication, the best single-panel webcomic I have ever seen. Natalie Dee‘s take on Drop Dead Fred: (click to make it larger)
F’reals, Natalie Dee. You nailed it. To say nothing of the high risk of tardive dyskinesia with Haloperidol, making it a very unwise choice of antipsychotics to prescribe to someone under, say, 30. Total bullshit. (Why am I having déjà vu; I feel like I was just rambling about this to someone recently — Jonohs? Panda? Miss D …? ) Anyway, to wrap up, an in-costume off-set picture by the crafts table:
Like all ladies, I am a sucker for stubble. Unlike most ladies, I brake for suspenders and striped pants, as well.
Awesome! Final picture of perfection via the rocketman. Thanks, buddy — this picture, the hair, and Mayall’s hapless expression kind of made my day.
(All screencaps via Samantha, aka timed, on the lj. Huge thanks for the fun and beautiful pictures. The ice stomach club is nothing to do with your great screencaps. Thank you!)
Last year my friendoh’s rad son came up with a superhero who was made out of number 19s and was named, appropriately, “19 Man.” That drawing has been lost to time so he made me a new one.
19 Man has a sidekick and a nemesis who has his own sidekick, and they all have kickass pets. Please click to enlarge and enjoy the awesome creativity. I especially like Mustache Dog — the very combination of the words of his name is something like “cellar door” or “fiddlesticks;” it pleases, yes?
I think I’ll start including some of my daughter’s work in liberated negative space as well. Like Picasso said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
The Thought Experiment 