postsecret

i was catching up on some of my online reading, and found a link on jake's blog to postsecret- i posted a secret last year @ an artomatic exhibit, then went back with glen a few days later, told him all about this cool project, and took him in the room to see the already-posted-secrets, for some now-inexplicable reason not expecting mine to be up there.
it was. i don't know if glen knows my handwriting, but if he did, he played it off well. thankfully. he's a good friend like that.
anyway, i thought the postsecret thing was over, so i checked out the link after seeing jake's post, and found it's been thriving behind my back.
i'm thrilled that it's taken off, and so after viewing all secrets currently posted to ensure that mine's already been cleared to make room for more (i know some of you know my handwriting, and it's easily recognisable if you've seen it even once), i'm happy to be passing it on again.
basically, you write a secret that you'd like to get off your chest anonymously on a postcard, adorn it or not as you see fit, mail it to the address given, and the dude (frank) posts pictures of the cards online. he's also trying to compile a book.
at one point, some of them were on display in the last artomatic exhibit @ dc's (ex)children's museum- very very intriguing. it's nice to know others' secrets are secret for many of the same reasons as your own.
big up jake for the reminder.
walk good. show+tell secrets.

rude food

big up nano for this hot link...brief but sexy...
walk good. eat rude.

breasts=wings?

so the weather's finally looking almost decent here in dc, but now it's lame because alyfromcali just left via supershuttle and is now sitting @ dulles waiting to board, instead of sitting on my living room couch with me, waiting to be a bad influence on our friends with jobs.
and since she left somehow all i can find to watch is shitty commercials, one of which confuses me enough that i had to get on here and ask-
so kfc's running this ad for (i think) "blazin' boneless buffalo wings" and they say that they're "boneless wings" because they're made from chicken breasts.
now i know that we can barely even call any of it chicken, but except for the fact that they're openly admitting it, isn't that fundamentally wrong?

walk good.
eat fresh?

ps: rosie- you're, of course, totally right about james earl jones in the "noooo!" scene (main page readers can ignore the link and see post immediately below). my horror @ lucas' directorial gaffe was all i could focus on. sorry about missing that major detail.

revenge of the scarf

i have to get bathed to head out with alyfromcali for this last day of semi-drunken-revelry so this is a quickie, but i wanted to say a few things before my continued consumption of rich food+drink clouds my ability to compose sentences about any of it.
so monday we saw revenge of the sith and hit toledo lounge for happy hour, and yesterday we ate @ both reidel's in van ness, and the grapeseed in bethesda. and i lost my 3rd scarf in 6 months because apparently, i can't have nice things.

revenge of the sith: definitely better than episodes 1+2 but still not as compelling as one would like. hayden christensen (possibly wrong spelling but i'm too pressed for time to check, and i don't care enough anyway) was not nearly as bad as i feared he might be- he was actually pretty decent, considering george lucas was his main guidance, but then in one of his "big moments" lucas really fucked him with a piece of particularly shitty direction.
without giving away what little of the plot people may not know, there's a moment after he becomes darth vader (you did know he became darth, right?) when he gets pissed off and breaks shit, which is kinda cool, but then he screams "nooooo!", which is laughable. anybody could tell you that an actor has to scream "noooo" first to get up the momentum to break shit. you start the scream, then break shit as the vocalisation climaxes then fades out because the physical "no" nullifies the need for the vocal one after a few seconds. breaking shit first makes the "noooo" completely pointless and anticlimactic. only lucas could get this very basic movie shtick in the wrong order. he fucked that kid.
but it wasn't bad. i didn't want my $ back like i did after the previous 2. and now i know that when i can't take it anymore, i'm can change my name to darth trini and go live in the bush. i think it's brilliant that there can be a world where it's that simple. you naturally choose the side your name's more appropriate for, and if you change sides later, you announce it by changing your name to some "darth" variation, and everybody gets the memo. i like simple.

happy hour was exactly that, but longer. and giri's a great bartender. and cute. go to toledo lounge (in adams morgan) and tip her handsomely.

reidel's was good food. i didn't have much because i knew i was hitting the grapeseed for dinner, but my meal and bbq sauces were good, and i definitely did a smell-check of everything else that came out the kitchen. it was good.

the grapeseed was phenomemal. not that reidel's wasn't, but they're not on the same scale.
thanks to knol, we had so much amazing food and wine that i couldn't quite make it up the stairs to bed last night. grims had to go up without me and i joined him about a half-hour later. i can't even explain how good it was, but the fricasseed mushrooms, the duck, softshell crabs, and filet mignon were all fabulous and we had so much good wine (i recommend the bonny doon ice-wine) that i'm gonna have to go over the list with knol again, when i'm less intoxicated.
the only damper (mild, in comparison with the food+drink) was losing yet another scarf. this scarf-losing streak started last christmas when i lost my favourite scarf after a night of drinking off the effects of that horrid marvin hamlisch gig-with-the-llama. it was the one i'd bought in london, blue+green flecks, long+warm+fuzzy...i wore it all winter.
i was exiting the kennedy centre and ran into bill, who inveigled me to go to the bar with him and the cast of the woolly mammoth show in the afi. since marvin was such a prick and grims wasn't home to improve my night, i went. we got pretty happy, then tried to take a taxi home together, but the driver was an asshole so we decided to bus/metro instead. so we said goodbye on the corner and i went down to the metro, but immediately upon buying a farecard, discovered i had to pee like a fiend. so i ran back up the ridiculously-long escalator to flag down another taxi because when i metro home i then have to wait @ union station for a bus into my neighbourhood, and i knew i had to pee much sooner than that.
i get into the slowest taxi in the universe and have to pee so bad (and d.c.'s roads so bad) that i was propping myself up with both hands to hold my ass off the seat, and coming about as close as i ever do to praying. i finally get home and rush up the stairs, relieved @ the prosect of relief, drop my jeans and start to pee.
then i realised i was wearing my long blue pea coat, which i was currently peeing on the inside-back of.
then i realised that somewhere between the metro and the house, i'd lost my favourite scarf.
then, the other day i went to toledo's happy hour with patrick+erika (it was my first time), and because they know bill (and that he often leads to wild drunken escapades) i told them the story of peeing on my coat and losing my scarf. that evening i got home from toledo and realised i'd lost my other scarf @ the bar.
last night i lost a hair scarf, not a neck one, but it was another favourite (from zed)- clearly i cannot be trusted to mix alcohol and accessories. i think all i can manage is my phone, keys, box and "pocket-book" (yes, i carry that damn notebook everywhere- i never know when i might need to write shit down). so i guess i need to learn to like turtlenecks. or move back to sweet trini...

walk good.

garden variety is the best kind

dude! i forgot to mention that this week was also the first use of the garden- the plants are doing fabulously and look like we'll have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and zucchini soon, and grims made crab+mushroom-stuffed-trout (i married wisely) seasoned with some of the herbs he planted.
my life is beyond complaint.
i just have to remember how good i have it when no-couch-leg-delivery-type-shit happens...
walk good. eat better.

vagina monologues

since alyfromcali arrived she's been encouraging my irresponsible behaviour. i love it.
jake's standup gig thursday night was good- he was funny, and some of the other comics on the bill were alright too. i'll be going to see him perform again.
after the show, we went to the improv to say hi to knol and the skinnywhiteboy (who still doesn't believe in the internet, so i guess it doesn't matter what i say about him here) and knol said giri was bartending @ toledo lounge, so of course, we (ie. me+alyfromcali, knol, skinnywhite and skippy) went to adams morgan. limed @ toledo until closing, then over to giri+knol's new place (to revisit my old couch). we were there until almost 6am, then found our way home by sunlight, at which point i could only sleep until 9am because i had to get up with everybody else who has a job so i could deal with those fuckers who wouldn't gimme my fucking paid-for-in-full-including-delivery-couch-leg! (much too soon after that no-sleep-tuesday-night.)
thankfully, those fuckers finally sent my leg and a spare (after the official end of business on friday, for what was supposed to be a tuesday delivery) and we now have almost our full complement of furniture back in the living room.
friday night we wanted to check out royal palace, which we were told had chinese food and brazilian strippers (a brilliant combination), but when i called they said they didn't have chinese food, and not all the brazilian strippers would be working that night- but we'd never been to that club (some of the group had sadly never been in any public situation with naked women) so we went anyway to see if it was any good.
so me+grims and alyfromcali were naturally the last of our crew to arrive, and when we walked in jake+jenn were sitting in a setup that instantly reminded me of school- not in a good way- royal palace, instead of the usual tables+chairs circling a main stage, has a first and second stage, with tables around the first, but just straight rows of chairs facing the second (which was more of a cubiclette than a stage). so i guess after 10pm was too late to get the good seats, and we found ourselves sitting in these rows with a dragon-lady coming around to forcefully offer drinks and collect cash immediately, while looking @ the clear, colourless heels of alternating dancers bouncing on either side of the backs of several large and unattractive men. there was a mirror on the upstage wall of the cubiclette, so if you worked your neck you could see the reflection of whatever the large unattractive men were paying for, but mostly, it was the backs of their pudgy necks and some gyrating ankles (the chick with the light-up-heels i liked danced on the first stage).
the schoolroom seating was disconcerting for me, as was the fact that the music seemed to be supplied by a jukebox played by customers instead of a dj, so there were abrupt, long silences, and song-jumps from shit like fantasy to don't fear the reaper, with the girls unprepared (routine-wise) to accomodate and dance to the music, instead of just moving body-parts to some unheard mental rhythm (worse from those who had no rhythm)...
that said however, before we left for the bar, there were several girls who really worked it. i wish i knew all their names, but lexi, the chick in the "pornstar" half-tank that covered only her upper-boobs, the back-pocket-wearing-chick who demonstrated her "heartbeat" with her vulva and ass on command (yes, you best believe i went up there and asked for my money's worth, and she flexed alternating buttcheeks too), and the tiny asian chick with the braces who could wine like a trini, were all worth my time and $. i had fun after all, and even those who wouldn't necessarily use that word to describe the experience were entertained, i think.
all very fitting for some of us, who'll be doing the vagina monologues sometime in june...
after making it home by about 3am, today we had to be in fucking leesburg for grims' 10am football match, so we were moving by 8am, made the game, hit the outlets because we were there (yay for size3 flaming chuck taylor's), picked up my mom who's in town until tuesday, stopped @ jp+sonomi's to pick up the tape of that japanese show, and crawled home by 8pm, exhausted.
tomorrow (sunday) i think we taking it easy and just taking mom+alyfromcali to eastern market, and resting up for happy hour and maybe revenge of the sith on monday and dinner @ the grapeseed (accompanied by much fermented grape juice) on tuesday, since who knows when either night will end...
more later. walk good.

yay!

floors done, house almost (kinda) put back together, and alyfromcali reach! this week's looking up!
so the floors are gorgeous, and i never thought so much could be done with so little in any place other than the theatre.
the new couch and loveseat arrived and they mighty sexy and comfy, but they delivered that shit one leg short, so me+grims+alyfromcali using the couch and waiting for delivery so we can flip over and use the other piece. but we can sit, so i guess we'll live. upstairs is all done except for the last contents of the linen closet, currently behind the coffee table in the basement, but we have what we need. the dining table and kitchen are up and functional and the tv set up in the living room (on its brand new entertainment centre) and is not even 11am on thursday.
grims @ work and i putting alyfromcali to work as soon as her ass come out the shower, so we can have a coffee table to put our feet on while we watch bad tv on the new couch, and a remote so we don't have to get up except to visit the fridge and bathroom.

dinner @ raku last night after she arrived- terrible service (not like them, made me sad) but food so amazing that i forgave all within the first mouthful- thought about calling friends to let them know we were going, but it was a last-second decision and all 3 of us were tired and still had to get her bed set up, so it wasn't a good time for extended socialising. but today, we hopefully doing happy hour @ giri's bar, then seeing jake's standup tonight (which we're very excited about), then hopefully strippers tomorrow night (yay- post soon to follow), eastern market this weekend (where i just acquired some new jade to replace the pig i lost while putting the house away for the floor-project, and a necklace with a real crab in it that's so cool), and seeing university friends all week. and if nothing else, me+alyfromcali can sit on the excellent couch and laugh @ bad tv, which we love doing together anyway. so i guess it's already a good vacation in spite of my not having time to sleep tuesday night between reinstalling the house and my shakespeare gig, and sleeping about 3hours last night.
life is good, if still a hair busier than i'd like.
meanwhile, poor grims is living in hell, with an exceptionally busy time @ work (12hour days since the beginning of last week, while trying to deal with the house) plus designing a show for theatre j (more info when i have it) and helping put the house back together. so now that i've got enough of the house together that i have some time again (relative term), i'ma try and be that amazing wife men dream of- massages with happy endings and fabulous dinners and warm, freshly-laundered underwear and all that good shit.
dude! speaking of underwear- while changing buses on my way home from the hotel on monday morning i saw what i swear was a pair of relatively clean tighty-whities lying @ the intersection of h + north capital streets (clean for lying in the road, that is)- i've been entertaining theories on that ever since...can't help wondering if the undies have anything to do with the surprisingly pleasant bus experiences i've had this week. i even gave some lady on the bus one of my bracelets this week, shit's been so nice...
anyway, i'm off to make alyfromcali move furniture.
more later. hopefully including strip-club-stories.
walk good.

bad blogger

since i miraculously have my to-do list down to single item for the moment, and have no choice but to take a break from it, in the interest of maintaining functional lungs and thus staying alive, i figured i'd take my break here and explain (once again) why i've been a bad blogger, and where i'll be for the next week or so.
(i don't know why i keep saying that after such-and-such-gig i'll have more free time- i should know by now that never works out because life just keeps happening- not that i'm complaining, but it doesn't consider siestas as important as i do, and that's a slight problem.)
so after my most recent stint @ the radio station, during my busiest shakespeare month (which is why i didn't get my damn drivers license yet) i realised that with alyfromcali staying here from may18-26, then dionne arriving mid-june to stay the rest of summer, i had to either get the floors done in the 2-and-a-half weeks between this realisation and aly's arrival from cali, or the 2-and-a-half weeks between aly's return to cali and dionne's arrival. since it was gonna be shitty either way until it's done and pretty, i opted for right now since grims has a show going up in june- of course, this is one of his busiest periods @ work, so it still killing him, but i think it woulda been harder when he was technically wukkin' 2gigs, instead of 1 busy one.
so since my last day @ the radio station, i spent the 1st week catching up on everything i didn't get done during my busy period of over-3-weeks-no-days-off, then jumped in on the floors. needless to say, this hasn't been helping my blogging.
we realised we wanted to sell our couch and some friends needed one, and our furniture could all fit in our basement without requiring storage if we lost it, so i been figuring out finding someone to do the floors fast enough that i can clean top-to-bottom and put the whole house back together before alyfromcali and cheap enough that we can afford it while giving ourselves enough time going in to get the whole house put away for the process, getting the couch removal organised and finding a new couch (only realising last night as we went looking that if they didn't have the one we chose in stock, we'd be livingroom-furniture-less while having a house-guest. living on the edge!) and after (thankfully) finding a couch we like in stock last night that'll be delivered tuesday, realised we need to live somewhere from friday night through monday morning while the shit gets done and settled, and need an entertainment centre (finally) because the chest our shit's been on (yes, it's another box- i like boxes) can't come back on newly refinished floors for a few days because its wheels are fucked up. and of course, i had a take-home book-prep from the radio station too (finished after the couch purchase last night) and shakespeare this friday and again the morning alyfromcali arrives, so there's not much "last minute" on putting the house away, or putting it back together. plus, i wanna have the drivers license by the time she gets here...
so today i got up early and i'm removing our years of accumulation to our basement (just getting over being sick and the asthma+allergies combo's not happy, but i'm excited at finally appreciating the basement, between the bookshelves+paint and now storage), working with grims on the accomodation situation (while he's @ work and running out for production meetings for that aforementioned show in june) and guessing we'll look @ entertainment centres online tonight.
the couch goes away tomorrow, but since we'll be exhausted tomorrow night anyway, we'll be bathing and going straight to bed after moving all the rest of our furniture i couldn't get alone. then on friday between my shakespeare gig and jake's b'day celebration @ raku (i'll consider it my reward for the previous days of schlepping shit) i'll come home, dismantle the bed, pack what we need for the weekend and check into the hotel (assuming we can find one in dc not already booked or prohibitively expensive). saturday we picking up shit we need for getting the house back together (since grims works monday- he wukkin' through most of this process) and sunday i'm catching up on all the other shit not getting done this week. hopefully i can get the drivers license taken care of between wednesday shakespeare and getting alyfromcali @ the airport...
i not lying though. i love that life keeps happening, with or without me. i just trying to hang on for the ride and keep my towel handy.
so after already being a bad blogger, i'm assuming i'll be non-internet-accessible for the weekend, and too exhausted anyway from now until next tuesday/wednesday.
i apologise to anyone who likes having the distraction from work, but promise i'll be back and in better form (the sexy new floors and couch and entertainment centre will be inspiring to sit among) next week, with tales of alyfromcali and the strip club.
walk good. talk soon.

happy birthday nico and jake!

an unlikelier pair never was (except maybe jake+april), but they're my boys, and it's their birthday (nico, is it lucy's b'day too? you should get your/her nails done).

nico, i wish i could be with you in london, but when i go to raku to celebrate with jake friday night, i will have some tamarind-guava-bbq-ribs in your honour. you'd love them.
i hope you both (or all 3 if you count lucy) have a great day, regardless of time zone.

and on the topic of b'days, i'd like to mention that scrawn (april 27) was feted by her students on her birthday, thus proving that even @ only 4'11", one can command the respect of unruly teenagers who'd rather be anywhere but school...

walk good. eat cake.
ps: i'll be around more once i get the floors taken care of @ the end of this week...

evo devo revo?

another 2 things:
well, 2 quotes, to be specific, that i've been thinking around-

"man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem he has to solve"
eric fromm.

"if the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't"
emerson pugh.

walk good.

hitchhikers guide to evolution?

2things:
big up aly-in-cali-soon-to-be-in-dc once again, for linking me with this article that first points out why we shouldn't bother speculating about human evolution, then offers some scientifically backed speculation. since i've been reading about the evo devo revolution and all, i'm much intrigued. when i have some time (sooncome) i'll try to get into what i've learned about evo devo- for those who don't care about that shit, science may well be my religion, so skip what you must.
next- i did like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy movie. i know other douglas adams fans (with opinions i respect, no less) were not fans of the film, but i just wanted to say for the record that not only do i love the way the movie handled the guide itself, i also thought it maintained the sense of fun and irreverence that helped make the book so great. i do agree that there shoulda been more about the towel and such, especially with such a fabulous guide available to disseminate the info, but i had a good time. i admit that going in with expectations of witnessing the ruin of yet another film of great potential (both in the context of reality, and in my mind) may have assisted my enjoyment, but i definitely enjoyed it.
so there.
walk good.

douglas adams is mos' def

somehow i forgot to mention how much i enjoyed the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
i would tell you all about it, but i think you should see it yourself.
walk good. don't forget your towel...

pet 'pocketbook' peeve

i hate the word 'pocketbook'.
or rather, i hate the word 'pocketbook' when it's used to describe my box.
when used by little old ladies to reference other things, unconnected to my person, i guess it's fine. but i do not carry a 'pocketbook'.
i do carry a small metal box instead of a purse- something that looks like a miniature of the road-cases that house sound equipment. i've used one for years now, since i began attending events where my backpack wasn't exactly appropriate, or necessary (my backpack contains everything a person could possibly need, except for the chocolate syrup, which i'm sadly out of right now).
i think i acquired the original deep-blue star-covered treasure chest by early '99, but within a year it was replaced by the current all-metal-exterior velvet-lined-interior box, since the latch on the blue-starry number doesn't hold as well as i'd like (now holds sweeties and batteries and other bedside goodies).
i love my box. it's roughly 756 cubic centimetres (about 14x9x6)- or for the americans, roughly 48.125 cubic inches (about 5.5x3.5x2.5)- and it holds all my immediate necessities. it keeps me from turning into one of those chicks with a purse big enough to hold the kitchen sink (but never designed well enough to find anything in it) and it fits in my backpack when i'm working. it's indestructible (important to us klutzes), it's cute (i think so, and my opinion's really the only one that counts here) and it's functional. it suits the minimalist in me.
the word 'pocketbook' doesn't begin to come close to describing this brilliant accessory, and even if it did, i am clearly not a 'pocketbook'-carrying type of person.
i am hardcore. it's a box.
it can be 'my box' when i feel the need for a double entendre, and the treasure (or pleasure) chest when the occasion arises. but it's never a 'pocketbook'. and if anybody thinks in that direction upon seeing it, i'd even prefer 'purse', simply because i recognise it's what i carry instead of one.
the other reason i hate the word 'pocketbook' is that as an occasional writer, i actually do have a pocket-sized-notebook that i carry whenever i step out my door. this is never what people are referring to when they exclaim, "oh! is that your pocketbook?!"
the aforementioned minimalist in me hates when words are used that don't accurately detail the situation, especially when more effective words are available.
walk good. speak truth.

back from busy

the hell-month is over. days off return to my life. i can just about muster an exhausted "yay!".
so i guess i'm back- although i have to keep this brief because i have a show this afternoon- i had to drop in to mention my most recent crazy-person-on-the-bus-episode.
this past week i had to take the x2 downtown, and a few stops along the way as i was wondering if i'd make it there alive (that bus ride always feels like the longest ever because the bus stops nearly every damn block and there's always a million people getting on and off) since @ each stop people were pausing on the in+out to not just hail the bus driver, but to hug and kiss her, chat her up, find out when they'd see her on that route again, and generally take their time about (dis)mounting the bus. now i admit, the bus driver was kinda cute and all, but really- if @ every stop at least 2people lime by the door instead of getting their asses out the way, it adds an extra 5minutes to an already long ride. (i admit that if i hadn't been running late, this extra 5minutes wouldn't have seemed so bad, but still...)
so this is the general scene until about halfway there, an older guy boards the bus. he seemed perfectly normal at first, although he had some trouble manouevering his body, bus fare, and baggage, but as soon as he got properly on, it started.
he starts going up to women individually and shouting into their confused and somewhat disgusted faces, "do you still love me?!"
now i must say that even if any of these poor women knew him, this manner of accosting them wouldn't endear him to them in any way. i escaped only because i was trapped between the window and some dude who'd sat next to me @ the previous stop (lame at the time, but much appreciated when the interrogation began).
thankfully i got off the bus before the situation escalated, but this was definitely the most aggressive crazy-bus-person i've come across. now i'm all concerned that i'll never ride the bus in peace again.
where are the crazy-persons i used to like to talk to on the bus?
is the lead in dc's water supply making even the friendly neighbourhood crazy-people nuts?
more later. walk good. watch out on the bus.