Music-love and creepy search terms

Every once in a while a musician comes around that I can't help but gush about. Fiona is like this for me (if I were a man, I would be completely incapacit -ated by her, for sure). Same with Tribe Called Quest and People Under the Stairs. I almost also feel this way about Wilco and Bonnie Raitt, but not quite. And definitely Hendrix, but that's so cliche.

The point? Right. My new heterosexual musical crush is Jessie Baylin. (That's her, up there above all this nonsense you're reading). I can't get enough, and you can't download her off ITunes, so you'll just have to go here until her site is up. And here is good,because there are four songs you can listen to, full-length. So go here.

DO IT!

She actually reminds me a bit about a non-angsty (or almost so) Fiona... same deep, rich tone in her voice, but totally accessible and very sexy. So basically not so crazy. And with a touch of jazz about her. To my male readers: fantasy material looks. Love her.

Okay, I'm done now.

But she's rad.

In fact, I wish we were friends. So I could be sort of rad by association. And also be heartbreakingly hip, of course, running around with John Mayer and whatnot in Los Angeles wearing very outdated shoes that everyone else thinks are incredibly cool because they're ugly and that's ironicwhen you're beautiful and sorta famous.

God, that is pretty awesome, I imagine. Until you're no longer slightly famous. Because then you're either so famous that you're available for public humiliation or just some sorta vaguely pretty blonde in ugly shoes, with very few marketable skills, waitressing in a nasty diner where there are roaches, if not rats, in the bathroom alongside a mop that smells like a combination of egg-salad, mold and vinegar.

Sorry. Tangent. Jessie Baylin = RAD. Basically, that's all.
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And now, for "search terms leading to Legwarmers":

wear shit pants
resolve chocolate stains
shit her pants drunk pictures of
blistering when wearing heels
clumsy but getting some
i want to try legwarmers in bed
naked with legwarmers
pictures of boys spray tanning

These all make a lot of sense, right? I mean, who doesn't want to know how to wear shit pants?

And who knew there were so many people with legwarmers fetishes? Welcome, friends. We don't judge here. (Well, unless you suck. Then we judge).

And as for the poor lost soul seeking pictures of boys spray-tanning, all I can say is WOW. Yay for the Internet: allowing creeps to be creepy 24/7, in real life and virtually. I am very, very afraid. Like, of you. (No, not you... YOU. Over there. In the little boys' underwear, rubbing that Spiderman doll where his bathingsuit would cover, were he to wear a bathingsuit and not that spandexy red and blue thing. Yeah, YOU.)

...

So, what have I learned from this little exercise?

I've really got to start writing about more of substance and intellect and less about, well, all of the above.

HEATwaaaayve! Naked! Bagels! Laywers!

Over the past week, Seattle has experienced a major heatwave. (No, not like the band, like the weather.) And it almost killed me.

It has been so fucking hot here that at night, even after popping a Xanax AND a Tylenol PM (which I'm sure will probably kill me if the heat doesn't), I STILL can't sleep. Instead, I lie there on top of my bed very close to naked, "glistening", as each one of my limbs goes entirely numb (because of the drugs), and fantasize about either dying of heatstroke or driving to my air conditioned office in my underwear, breaking in, and sleeping under my desk until morning, where I'm awoken by our small and very shy hispanic office cleaning man, who is hitting me with his vaccum cleaner, trying not to look at the strange half-clad white girl under her desk.

Meanwhile, what I should really be concerned about is the fact that I'm so heavily medicated that I couldn't get out of bed to save myself if there were a fire or defend myself if there were a prowler (and even if I did, I'd be in my underwear, and with all the drugs there's no way I could get further dressed, so that would be pretty embarrassing, too).

(And other totally logical and likely examples of dangerous things like that.)

By the time I got to sleep last night, it was 4:15 a.m., and I was sprawled out in the middle of my livingroom floor in front of the sliding door and open screen door and window, with three fans pointed right at me and set on full-speed, pushing around air so hot it feels like I'm being blowdried all night. Awesome.

When I finally started to wake up, late, I was groggy and disoriented from the long night, and it was bright as all shit in my apartment. So, I kept my eyes closed to ease into this whole "waking up after 3 hours of tortured sleep" thing. The noise was incredible. It was like I was lying in the middle of a helicopter pad. And then I realized, as I really began to wake up, that it was super bright in the place because all the windows were open. All the windows were open. OPEN. And I was LYING, BARELY CLOTHED, ON MY FLOOR with my hair blowing everywhichway, for all the neighbors and commuters on the street directly outside my sliding door, to see.

After the momentary frozen shock of it all (and a few "WhoOOOOoooo!"'s from outside), I rolled over onto my stomach and army-crawled to the hallway, in my undies, where I found refuge in the form of a pillowcase, which I wrapped around me like a too-short towel/too large tube top and dashed into my dark, hot bedroom, where I sat on the floor and half-giggled, half-burned in humiliation until I was approximately 10 minutes late for work, exhausted and still not dressed.

Awesome.


But, on the upside, my office is today full of 1)food 2) coffee and 3)reasonably attractive young lawyers.

Fridays are bagel days at my office. And that makes me VERY happy, as I spend the rest of the week calorically scrimping (no breakfast, Zone Bar for lunch, a couple Americanos, and salad for dinner) so that I can drink whatever I want (alcohol is very high-calorie!) and, most of all, indulge on bagel day.

Today was 1/2 a jalepeno bagel with jalepeno cream cheese and 1/4 a cinnamon twist bagel with strawberry. Delicious and incredibly overindulgent.

To top it all off, we've also got a bunch of lawyers and consultants in our office this week, (apparently we only hire the 25-35 year old, attractive lawyers and consultants - Yay!!!) which means we ALSO had fresh coffee in every office (I guess to impress/motivate them. I dunno). I am on my third cup. Buzzzz.

So not only am I focused (thank you, caffeine) on work, but I've also been incredibly productive otherwise today: I've made eyes at at least three delicious little lawyer-types, who keep walking by my office.

Probably because they think I'm cute. (Which would be a minor miracle, as on three hours of sleep I look like Rob Schneider.) So far, at least one made eyes back. (I think. Or maybe he was checking himSELF out in my window.)

(I've got to stop with these excessive, sarcastic, parentheticals.)

(It's really getting ridiculous.)

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Have a good weekend, all!

(And if you have a little time to click around, check out Ron Silliman, who is smart and on point with poetics. Because after you leave here, you probably need a little intelligent stimulation. Just looking out for you.)

It's a bad sign when your PR agency needs some PR.

As we were recently discussing the plight of PR in the comments section of a recent post, I couldn't resist reposting this gem of a terrible and offensive pitch by a now-unemployed PR professional. Gawker did a great job of covering this, front to back.

Gotta love unabashed racism. Unbelievable.

Pearl Jamming and a damn good weekend

It was a good weekend. I managed to cram 4 days of festivities into two whirlwind tours of fun. I'll keep it short, but here's the gist:

Spent all day Saturday on either the beach or a boat at L's cabin. On the beach, I read trashy magazines, threw around a football, and drank beers. On the boat, I watched wakeboarders ride, drank raspberry vodka from the bottle, listened to SoundGarden and pretty much felt like a badass. The company was good, the music was good, and it was that classic summer day you never want to end.

By the time we got the boat off the water, I was pretty sure it couldn't get better (remember, I was three sheets to the wind, in a swimsuit, in the sun, and no one had yet shat themselves). But then it did.

A couple of my friends and I were unexpectedly offered free tickets to the Pearl Jam show that evening by a new (generous) acquaintance. The concert was at the Gorge in George, Washington. Not only is this my favorite venue (for a number of reasons but mostly the aesthetic appeal of the place -- it's just breathtaking), but I was already pretty close, my friends are die-hard PJ fans, and the prefunking was done.

I was in, with three friends.

Now, it was hotter than two rats copulating in a tube sock at the Gorge. We're talking 89 degrees after the sun set. But I was so blissed out the whole time just to be there that I didn't even notice. It was good. Like, really good. Teenage Wasteland was a particular high point, as was Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, of course. But you can download it here and see for yourself.

After the concert, we went back to the cabin where we crashed and then got up the following morning for an early drive home, during which I slept shamelessly the whole way, half draped over my helpless (but admirably patient) backseat companion (who doubled as a pillow).

Upon arriving home, I changed and went to the much-anticipated company picnic and -- surprise! -- had a great time. It was again a zillion and a half degrees, but at one point all the execs kids had a waterfight and somehow my CEO and I got involved, which was both fun and totally necessary to prevent me from actually melting right there in the park.

Immediately following the picnic, I got on a ferry and headed across the water to an island where a friend of mine recently moved and bought a boat. We killed three hours on the boat, and then went to a nearby restaraunt on a pier and ate our weight in seafood.

By the time I finally got on the ferry home, it was 11:30 and I was full, completely exhausted, and happy. You can't ask for much more than that.

Mailman, books, poems, picnic.

Mailman:
So I go to my mailbox this morning, cringing, anticipating it to explode with bills and the like. But all I got was some junk mail and a note written on the back of one of those "Sorry you missed us, our next delivery date will be:" postcards. The card read like this:

"Hi, I'm your mailman, Ron. I saw you moving in and I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. Hopefully I'll see you around!"

Rad. So now not only am I probably in serious debt with the utility companies, but I'm living alone and the mailman, "Ron", knows where I live and is motivated enough to write me little notes.

My life is so bizarre.
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Books:
I just finished "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss, which I loved. Intelligent, charming and deeply funny, intensely personal, moving. Told by an 80-year old man who fears becoming invisible. (A fear I must admit I share. That and NOT becoming invisible.) Good fiction from a talented writer.

I just started "The Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier (what is it with me and fictional history?) and "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I'm reading both at the same time, because I couldn't decide between the two and didn't want to wait to start either.

One involves the connection, conversation and communion between the dead and the living based on the lifetime of memory and the other involves a circus, a stubborn elephant, and unrequited mid 1930's love. Good stuff.
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Poems:
I have those little magnetic words leftover from my days in college when I was pretty sure I was a poet and I was fascinated by E.E. Cummings, met Billy Collins and was in love with a boy who could write me under the table, into tears, and most importantly, into bed.

I keep these words on my fridge and on another board in my art room (where my piano, easel and computer live). I regularly smush these around with the palm of my hand just to see what is coincidentally created. Of course, it's usually nonsense. The other day the only thing I could pick out after the smushing was "Squirrel apple on fire", which I don't even get but is sort of funny.

But this morning I must have had the magic touch, because I pulled out a couple real gems. I like doing it this way because I always feel like when the words form something sensical that it's some big cosmic signal to me or something. Anyway, today's include:

Collect butter colored petals I
this flower has the look of
fashion.

...and...

Man
I believe you in that suit
almost.

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Picnic:

[Side note: Any time I use the word "Picnic", it reminds me of one of my favorite of Billy Collins' poems, "Picnic, Lightning", and of the line which inspired that title, which came from Lolita:

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory."

...which I committed to memory long ago, because it's awesome.]

I have a company picnic this weekend, and for the second time in two months, I have to attend a huge company function single. You see, everyone at I work with is married. All the execs, all of accounting, and 70 percent of the sales team, the other few of which are in serious relationships. So I'm a veritable freak of nature amongst my colleagues.

And I'm pretty sure there won't be alcohol or anyone else single there. Someone should really write a survival guide for this kind of thing.

In fact, I might actually pray for lightning.
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Have a good weekend!

You have to be smarter than the mailbox.

Ever since I moved (in May), I haven't gotten mail.

The reason for this is that when my landlord gave me the keys to the mailbox, she just sorta gestured over her shoulder to this big shiny metal box on the side of the road and said that although my unit number is 2, my mailbox number is 10. Then she pointed to the smaller of my two keys and told me this key would gain me access to my mailbox.

She was a nice-enough lady, but old. And clearly very ditzy. The lady could hardly focus from sentence to sentence, and in order to see the place, I had to schedule an appointment around when she got her hair done and when she got her nails done. The point is that this woman was no genius, and was so old/technologically simple-minded that she didn't, for example, know what Craigslist was, or even really how to use the Internet. So, though I'd never had one before, I presumed remote mailbox operation would be a simple task. If she could do it, I could do it.

Wrong.

For two months, I've been periodically going out to that goddamn mailbox and trying my damndest to insert my key into the one lock on the front side of that box -- the street-facing side.

Each time, no dice. There is honest to God no way my key goes in that hole. And for months I couldn't figure it out. To my credit, neither could the other two people I put this problem to (though one was a 9 year old and the other was an asian stranger on the street one Sunday afternoon who asked if I was OK while I banged the big metal box with my fists in frustration like a cromag or some type of monkey).

No luck. The key looked good, and everyone else seemed to be getting their mail just fine. With one lock and one key and no sign of a problem other than my inability to make the key open the lock, I was at a loss. I knew I was doing something wrong, but couldn't figure out what.

So today, when I got an email from Geico saying my car insurance renewal form had been returned and that there was a problem with my mailbox that could cause a lapse in my insurance, I finally gave in. I mean, this was a matter of the law -- there was just no getting around it... I needed into that mailbox, and I needed my landlord's help to do it. Beaten, I buckled and called her.

Me: Yeah, Anita? It's me, um, from unit 2? You know the mail key you gave me?
Anita: Yes, honey. The key for your mail.
Me: Yeah, well, it's broken. I've been trying since I moved in to get my mail, but it won't go in the lock.
Anita: You haven't gotten your mail for two months?
Me: No, you see I was really busy and stuff, but now I need to get it and I can't, because the key doesn't work.
Anita: Well are you putting it in number 2's box? You know, number 10?
Me: I would, but there's only one lock, you know? And my key doesn't fit.
Anita: Well honey -- [laughing, now]-- you're on the wrong side of the mailbox. YOur box is on the other side. That front lock is for the mailman. You just have to walk around the box to get to your lock. Have you tried that?
Me: Oh, just kidding! Ha! Wouldn't that be funny, though? If someone thought their mailkey was broken and tried for 2 months to get their mail but the whole time they were just on the wrong side? But I was just kidding about that. Because that would be pretty dumb.
Anita: No you weren't, honey. Alright, well, I have to go.
Me: Wait! No, I WAS! I totally know how to use a mailbox and stuff! I work in technology! I am very resourceful!
Anita: Bye bye, then!
::click::

So now I guess I know how to get into my mailbox. I feel like a moron, yes, but I have access to the box of wonder, joy, and bills. Speaking of which, I haven't paid a utility bill since I moved in (due to the mailbox situation), so I've probably figured this all out just in time for my water and electricity to be turned off due to past-due balances.

Oh, one other awesome thing: I also didn't recieve phone bills during this time, and just today called to determine what I owed Cingular. The icing on the cake? Not only did I owe my regular monthly bills, but an additional $165.98 in charges related to phone calls I made out of the country to someone I was (casually, but still) dating up until a couple weeks ago. (He spent a week or two out of the country on vacation and I -- foolishly and expensively -- kept in touch during that time). AND I anticipate recieving at least one postcard that he sent during that trip as well, as soon as I open that mailbox. Which is awesome. So my ego, pocketbook and emotional well-being will all have taken a significant beating by the time this day is done.

Being a masochist, I'm really looking forward to that.

I'll keep you posted, but please don't be surprised if my next post references my newly-aquired night shift at the local Taco Time. I might need the job (and my pride is pretty much out the window at this point so no loss there).

Poo Tube Recall

You know that innertube my friend rode on that caused her to crash, poop, and display extreme hypochondria? (You know, this story?)

Well, check this out:CPSC's Kite Tube is being recalled due to deaths and serious injuries, both of which are WAY worse than pooping yourself in public.

So if you happened to purchase one of these puppies and my story of woe and rectal misfiring didn't put you off the thing, this might.

Toys these days. Sheesh.
Be careful out there!