How you know it's going to be a bad day by 11:00 a.m.

First, an actual news story from a few weeks ago:

Church Fires Teacher for Being Woman
From Associated Press
August 21, 2006 7:40 AM EDT

WATERTOWN, N.Y. - The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job - outside of the church.

The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on Aug. 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city's day-to-day operations is a woman.

"I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to" outside of the church, LaBouf wrote Saturday.

_____________________________________

Wow. Rough day, huh? Which, by the way, doesn't even come close to mine today, which went something like this (list compiled at 11:30 a.m., keep in mind. I've got a whole day to go):

6 a.m. -- drop off of friend at the airport, which necessitated an alarm clock blaring at approximateloy 5:20 a.m. and me dragging my ass out of a warm, snuggly bed and into business clothes less than 5 hours after I went to bed. Ouch. Deliver friend at appropriate terminal, then steer car to the "cell phone waiting lot", where people can park for free while waiting for loved ones to arrive.
6-7 a.m. -- make sleep nest in fold-down backseat of car in airport cell phone waiting lot (in effort to avoid traffic and stay close, geographically, to the location of a 9 a.m. business meeting downtown). Drift off, thinking how lucky I am to have a practical car.
7 a.m. -- wake, shivering, as the heat has seeped out of my car and left it approximately 45 degrees. Crawl to front seat to turn on car, and heat.
7:03 a.m. -- turn key in ignition. Hear "click, click, click" sound, but no engine.
7:04 a.m. -- turn key in ignition. Hear "click, click, click" sound, but no engine.
7:05 a.m. -- turn key in ignition. Hear "click, click, click" sound, but no engine.
7:06 a.m. -- turn key in ignition. Hear "click, click, click" sound, but no engine.
7:07 a.m. -- turn key in ignition. Hear "click, click, click" sound, but no engine. Begin to sweat, then swear.
7:17-7:35 a.m. -- pop hood of car to heighten awareness of my distress, then tour parking lot, asking 5 men in pickup trucks if they have jumper cables. None of them do, prompting me to wonder why in the FUCK they have a pickup truck, if they're clearly commuting to a desk job and don't intend to ever haul anything, carry tools or have jumpercables for damsels in distress! Also ask a couple old ladies, one girl my age, and one middle-aged man in a suit with two cell phones attached to his head who spoke something like French. No luck.
7:40 -- call everyone in the area I know (three people) and discover they're all already on their way to work.
7:50 -- get a call from one friend, who gives me the name of a tow-truck company, who I google on my Blackberry and call. They'll be out in 10 minutes.
7:55 -- hear "tap tap" on window, and find two men in navy blue jumpsuits standing outside my window, peering at my battery and asking if I need a jump.
7:56 -- "Well, yeah." (Duh.)
7:57 -- tow truck arrives, prompting two jumpsuited men to say "you called a tow truck?"
7:58 -- "Well, yeah." (Assholes.)
8:00 a.m. -- cables hooked up, key turned, ignition catches. Car is running!
8:01 a.m. -- go over to say thank you to tow truck guy, who cuts me short when he hands me a bill for $62.50. $62.50 for approximately four minutes of light work! Resigned, hand over the money, sign life away in ink, and make mental note to get into the tow truck business as a second career. They make bank.

I won't go into details of my other escapades this morning (spilling of hot latte on inner thigh, 20 dollar parking tab when I go to the meeting for which I paid 62.50 to wait and kill my car, and using a Porta-Potty due to real restrooms being "down for maintenance"), but it's been a long morning.

Reeeeaally looking forward to the weekend. Hope yours is good. And if you happen to have any happy karma vibes to spare, you know where to send 'em.

BumberMusic, tweens, paraphenalia, vodka in the bushes, and what's in my I-Pod.

The weekend before last, I went to Bumbershoot, an annual music festival here in Seattle. Saw loads of great music, including Zero7, Steve Miller Band, Kanye, Atmosphere, Tribe Called Quest, Speaker Speaker, Sonja Kitchell, etc.

The first night, my friends and I decided we'd better use Kanye (who we don't care much about, honestly) as a dry-run for Tribe (who I would bleed one of my closest friends to death just to see). You know: get there early, see how hard it is to get a good position on the floor, yadda yadda.

We got into the stadium two hours early for the concert and people were already sprawled out on the astro-turf, claiming positions for the concert. We rolled our eyes at each other, stepped across a sea of bodies and posted up somewhere relatively near the stage. It was only then, after sitting down and making some room for ourselves, that we looked around.

We were SURROUNDED by pot-smoking pre-pubescent kids. Nearly all the girls were wearing jean skirts and tank tops (sooo impractical for astro-turf sitting!). The boys tended to all look the same: baggyish holeyish jeans and t-shirts with either flip flops or oversized cartoon shoes and slightly off-center hats.

It wasn't the fact that these kids were less than half my age that threw me off -- I mean, c'mon, we were at Kanye West -- I get it.

What shocked me was all the glass pipes they were smoking out of -- in broad daylight. Isn't that a little balsy?

I've never understood the desire to use paraphenalia when smoking pot. I mean, what ever happened to a good, old-fashioned, disposable joint? Pretty amazing. But fortunately, Seattle is a pretty pot-friendly city. No arrests or confiscations were made, and the tweens got nice and bleary-eyed and blissed out pretty much the whole night. And that meant they did pass around curly fries, which was awesome...

Anyway, after a half hour or so of chiling on the Astroturf and sizing up who we'd have to knock out to get to the front of the stadium when the music started, we decided we'd have no problem blasting through them all a few minutes before the show started (really, they were all about 100 pounds), so we hit the beer garden, giving up our spot. This proved a steller idea at first: An hour later, we were buzzy, fuzzy, and back at front, enjoying the show (with a clear view, too -- another benefit of going to concerts with children). The downside? 5 dollar plastic cups of Miller Lite keg beer. Spendy, cheesy, and not that tasty. Blew 50 bucks in about 30 minutes on those for 3 of us. Not cool.

The following day, we returned, though we refined our technique. This time, instead of driving to Bumbershoot, we filled up a travel coffee mug with vodka and bused down in the afternoon, eliminating drunk driving and the beer-garden spend. After stashing the carafe in some bushes outside Seattle Center and praying no industrius bum happened across it, we dashed in, caught some shows, and ate.

Later, we retrieved the alcohol, untouched, from the bushes and brought it in to the stadium, where we caught Atmosphere.

[In college, my friends and I were in love with an Atmosphere song where he sings: "I'm gonna be bigger than Jesus/ Bigger than wrestling/ Bigger than the Beatles/ Bigger than breast implants/ I'm gonna be the biggest thing to hit these little kids/ Bigger than guns/ Bigger than cigarettes.".

One of these friends was a guy named String. String had a real first name, but didn't go by it, because String just fit. Picture a pale piece of string, approximately 6 feet and 7 inches long, standing on end. Now give it a medium-high voice, too-short jeans, a Hurley t-shirt, and imagine it never stops talking. That's him.

Anyway, String is a classic college character, and the Atmosphere song reminds me of him because he used to always mix up the first few lines, saying "Bigger than JEEEZus, bigger than ELVIS!!" in this enthusiastic, nerdy twang. Good stuff.]

Back to the point: After Atmosphere came Tribe, and we were very close to the stage, which was really phenomenal. Highlights include:

1. Asking a few of the kids around me if they knew who Tribe was before the concert started and them saying they have no idea... they're just here for Atmosphere, then realizing they weren't even born when Tribe dropped their second album.

2. Knowing all the lyrics.

3. Swinging (and then accidentally releasing) a t-shirt above my head, losing it in a sea of hip-hop-loving bodies, never to be seen again.

4. Nearly getting in a fight with a bouncer in an attempt to get backstage.

5. Being saved by a female bouncer after nearly fighting the male one in an attempt to get backstage, then nearly crying when I told her they were the only group I'd get arrested trying to meet before she told me I should probably leave and stop saying that, lest I actually get arrested.

__________________________________

What's in my IPod, CD player and head these days:

Sergio Mendez "Timeless" -- a collaboration between Sergio Mendez and Will.i.am (of Black Eyed Peas), and a blending of my favorite genres of music: bossa nova, samba, jazz, hip hop, and soul. I seriously can't stop listening to it. Infectious rythms, talented vocalists including Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and India.Arie, and some of my favorite rappers including Q-Tip, Black Thought and Chali 2NA.

It's a fusion you don't hear too often, but I hope there's more of. And it's rocking my world, a.m. to p.m..

Download it here.

The news that still breaks... five years later.

If ever there is a day to pray, it is today. For understanding, for grace, for direction, for courage, and for guidance.

No post today. Instead, I'm setting aside a minute to really remember.

I hope you do, too.

Legwarmers calls the Five Oh on BIGPMPN

Today, I called the police.

I was cruising home from work, stuck in traffic, passing time per the usual. My typical bored-in-traffic routine is as follows:

1. Initially, be irritated (as if I shouldn't expect the rush-hour madness). Look at the drivers around me, hoping to connect and commisserate with them.
2. Get bored with this, until I realize this is a prim-o opportunity to have some fun at the expense of those around me, at which point I do any or all of the following:

- Stare at an uncomfortable, nerdy male driver and gesture for him to call me or signal like he has something on his face
- Turn up the cheesy pop-rap local radio station, roll down the windows, and lip-synch to Lil Weezy while throwing up gang signs and pounding my chest
- Turn up the other cheesy radio station, and really sing to a Celine Dion love ballad, while everyone else stares...

...and so on.

Well, today, while looking around for other drivers with whom to interact, I spotted a red convertible Porsche shortly ahead of me, driven by a youngish male with a white hat on. As I approached, and once we were nearly parallel in neighboring lanes, I looked over again, curious as to what kind of 20-something is driving a Porsche.

Well, this guy was clearly a douchebag: white cocked hat, white baggy pants, white too-big-t-shirt, with mirrored sunglasses and rapist-facial hair, and most importantly, he was drinking a Budweiser while driving the car on the freeway in rush hour traffic like nobody would notice.

I could not believe the gargantuan balls this guy had to have to drink and drive with the top down on a sunny day like the law didn't apply to him.

Suddenly furious, more at his utter disregard for the rules the rest of us were following, regardless of our collective desire to also enjoy a frosty beverage, I picked up the Blackberry and dialed.

That's right, I narked on his big-pimpin-punk-ass.

Police Dispatcher: Washington State Patrol, is this an emergency?
Me: Well, it's only an emergency if this asshole is sexually active. Then it's an emergency, because our gene pool is at serious risk of increased fatal idiocy and arrogance.
PD: So this is not an emergency, maam?
Me: I guess not.
PD: How can I help you today?
Me: There's a Kevin Federline lookalike in a red convertible Porsche on 405 headed South at the Kirkland exit who I would like to complain about.
PD: Do you have a licenseplate number, maam?
Me: Oh, yeah, let me slow down. Hold on just a secon--
::bursts into incredulous laughter::
PD: Maam? Is everything alright? Do you have a licenseplate?
Me, calming down: Yeah, yes. It is, uh... BIGPMPN. That's BIGPMPN. Like "big pimping". Did you get that?
PD: Yes, maam. Big Pimping. BIGPMPN. Yes.
Me: Wow. I can't believe that. Anyway, the guy is -- well -- he's drinking a beer in his car.
PD: Uh huh. Kevin Federline... drinking beer. Got it...
Me: No, I mean, he's drinking a beer, like out in the open, while driving on the freeway, like he doesn't even care. I mean, it's a Budweiser. Not even Bud Light.
PD: Okay, maam, slow down...
Me: ...and I can read the label because he keeps waving it around, and I feel we are all in danger on the road with this guy!
PD: Okay, what is your name, please?
Me: HE JUST OPENED ANOTHER BEER! He finished the first one--well I guess it could have been his second or eleventh--and just threw the empty in the backseat and cracked open another! I can't believe this! Are you going to arrest him? I hope you arrest him! How soon are you going to arrest him?
PD: We'll send someone out to check it out if they have time, maam. But we can't do that until we get your name. What is your name? And phone number?

...

Really this story is anticlimatic, as I exited the freeway shortly after I made the call and never got to see the jerkoff arrested. But I did call the police (and not even accidentally from my pocket this time). Which was sorta exciting.

...

Oh, I give up. But have a good weekend, if I continue to suck at writing until then (quite likely). And remember: I'm a nark. A pissed-off, K-Fed hating nark. Watch out for me.

Fanny feedback, and the angriest cities in America.

I got quite a few emails about the Fanny Pack Crisis America is facing at the hands of designers who have spent too much time doing coke and being ironic and flamboyant, and I thought I'd share a couple with you.

It seems I'm not the only one who's noticed this resurgence of fanny accessories. Jason wrote:

"There was a young woman that came in my work with a fanny pack, more of a hips sack, like makeup counter girls wear. We had a discussion about it. We determined that the fanny pack/hip sack only works if you are European. Just my input."

Okay, fair enough. European men can, after all, get away with riding on Vespas and carrying man bags while being straight, and european women can get away with not shaving their underarms, legs, or upper lips and smelling vaguely of cheese and patchouli. So I'll give you that, if only because they're doing so much else that's hideous that I can't bear to fight the fanny pack battle with all of Europe.

But how awkward was that conversation at your workplace, Jason? I mean, we're in AMERICA. And by the end of the conversation, you'd determined that the poor woman sporting the ugliest bag known to mankind better either take it off pronto or buy a plane ticket to Prague! Ouch.

The way you say "we had a discussion about it" makes me uncomfortable - like when my friend's father sat me down to have a discussion about sex -- when I was 19.

I have to say, I still tend to identify with Pat (of Texas -- land of ten-gallon hats and frat-dicks with striped polo shirts and spiky hair), though, who writes:

"um...fanny packs were NEVER really in. Like, I had one to carry my herd of carnivorous dinosaur toys in second grade."

Word, Pat. Fanny packs were purely utilitarian even before we had a sense of style. Pat rocked the pack to carry his plastic dinosaur toys, so when he got his ass kicked on the playground for bringing plastic dinosaur toys to school, he could run using both arms without risking dropping them.

He knew they weren't cool, but he carried it because when you get sat on everyday at lunch by Big Dan, the somewhat special kid who weighed 150 lbs at the age of 7, you knew you weren't going to be cool, so you might as well be practical.

Good luck with that, Pat. Rock on.
___________________________________

In other news, my buddy Dave sent me THIS , which you must check out. It's an article on MSN listing the top 150 angriest cities in America.

The most angry city? #1 goes to Orlando, Florida. In fact, Florida has 5 cities in the top 12, and isn't listed after that. So basically it's a pretty pissed off state, in general.
And you know what? I'm not surprised. All those fucking hurricaines and alligators in the ditches and the stifling, deadly humid heat, and the toll booths everywhere -- they'd piss me off, too. Add tourists and voter fraud/the recount (see angry mob, pictured at left), and you've got yourself a city built on rage and resentment.

Seattle comes in solidly in the middle of the pack, which I attribute to the fact that while we do have 4 solid months of gray drizzle, we are typically well-medicated (antidepressants do wonders to allay anger and depression) and quite fit as well as caffeinated. So it's all about balance, really.

Check it out. And enjoy the three-day weekend!! I'll be at Bumbershoot, watching Zero7, Kanye, Atmosphere, Speaker Speaker, Steve Miller Band, and my favorite group of all time: A Tribe Called Quest -- front row, probably sans shirt and three sheets to the wind. God, it's going to be epic. Will give you the full report upon my return (and after one full day of sobering up/hydrating).

Until then...

Fanny Pack Freakout

Please, God. Not this.

Look, I am relatively fashion-forward, when my budget will allow. I know, I know, I'm a consumer whore -- and how! But I like fashion and accessories and shoes and delightful girly goodies like that. It makes me happy, because it's pretty and shiny and new. I make no excuses for this whoreism.

But I'm afraid the trendy buck is stopping here. It is coming, in fact, to a screeching fucking halt, and this is why:

It's. A. Fanny. Pack. "Waist bag" my ass.

Speaking of ass, like mine needs another one (in the form of a fanny-pack) resting on top of it! What the hell?

Who has ever looked good in a fanny pack? Maybe Lindsy "Skeletor" Lohan or Nicole "Breastbone" Richie, but honestly, if you technically should be hospitalized, I don't think you count, here. Right?

AND, as if skinny jeans weren't enough, leggings are back. What is with that trend? Didn't we get enough of it, zipper-ankle jeans, aqua-net and shoulder pads in the eighties? Ooooh, no. I guess not. Because leggings (the ass's worst nightmare) are back, with a vengence.

...

Alright, I'll admit it: own some. And I even found a great minidress to wear them under, with heels, when I'm in NY or downtown and am feeling like taking a particularly confident fashion risk.


But I swear to God, I'm burning it ALL, now that I discovered the goddamn Marc Jacobs "waist bag" pictured above. I mean, it's worse than the momentary nationwide fascination with UGGS, (retarded "surf boots" made of sheepskin, worn with swimsuits, and intended for barefoot wear), for chrissakes.

I'm hyperventilating, I think. Anyone have some Xanax?

If these things come back I might not be able to leave my house at all this season -- I may be forced to just stay inside and wait out the hideous trends of the moment while doing Buns of Steel and Tae Bo videos in hypercolor sweatsuits, practicing Scientology while accidentally cutting myself on my slap bracelets and eating Dip'n'Dots.

...

Have a nice, fanny-pack-free, day.

Tape a record, go to prison.

Dear Huey Lewis,

I love you. Do you believe in love? Naturally.

I know I ain't perfect, but remember how you told me it's alright? I really took that to heart, and finally I feel ready to tell you how I feel, and why.

It's just that the heart of rock n' roll really IS the beat(n)! And you got me through some really hard times, with boys calling me "prude" and "boring" and "straightlaced" and "crazy bitch", with your theory that it is, in fact, hip to be square. Thank you for that, it changed my life.

I'm so happy to be stuck with you, Huey. I guess what I'm trying to say is... well... I get a little shy, so pardon me if I borrow your more eloquent words for a moment:

So do you love me or what? Do you love me or what? You're just breakin' me up... Do you love me or what?

Please circle one:

Yes

No

Maybe

(Also, I really, really want that shirt. Where did you get it?)

Love always -- heart and soul,

Your other woman (it's the power of love, Huey. Really.)