Otherpeoplesblogs

Slow posting...

Yes, I know. I have read the emails and seen the posts. I again have been a slow blogger. 

My leisure writing time has been filled with my upcoming treatise "No more journalists!", about why Hollywood and New York needs to find new occupations for the female protagonists in romantic comedies and chick lit.

(I also include the related fields magazine editors, writers, book editors and their assistants.)

Sideways-Wino edition

When your local bodega starts pushing pinot over merlot, it is a phenomenon. Or at least, it was a phenomenon.

(It is hard to see, but it says "NO MERLOT!" under the "Pinot Noir Here!")

But can you still get Mad Dog 20/20 or a nice Strawberry Boone's?

Guest Poster-Shubbadubba

I pinched a nerve in my neck this week. Monday I could not move. Tuesday I could move, but could not type. Today I can type, but still have tight upper torso.

So in lieu of a real post, I give you plea from my partner Shubbadubba : that our acquaintance "Kevin" get his own blog.

Rather than becoming the statistical butt of someone's collegiate thesis, I felt it necessary that I post a brief letter of begging to a fellow "content gratifier", Kevin...

I think it's about well and high time that you go forth amongst the froth of the large Blog-i-verse and create one of your own. I seriously feel the need to read your musings on Kool Moe Dee expressions and the latest news from the movie and Steven Seagal front. Won't you grace us with such a modest, yet daily splash of funniness that we all so richly deserve?

I beg of you.

Neh, I request of you.

Neh. I make HORSE sounds in your direction in hopes that this request may be seen, heard, understood and followed.

Danke.

I told Jeremy about this plea on Monday when I couldn't post and he laughed.

The next day, he called me and said, "I'll do Shubbadubba one better. Kevin and Jeff need to become a comedy duo."

My response, "Jeff doesn't write comedy. He should, but he doesn't."

"No, Jeff's the straight man."

Gauntlet thrown.

(Jeremy is correct though. The last few days in his blog, the two of them have really had at it. Now, if you have been reading this blog from the beginning, you'll see that I had wanted to start it with Jeff.  Heck with that though, since I made the Defamer without him which means I am eligible to retire from blogging tomorrow and still consider it a success.)

Notice how a few days of back pain have made me what I hate? Why, I feel the tension creeping back as this entry continues...

Political Guilt

Today there was a small twang of guilt for my flippant disregard for the SOTU last night, even if I was in good company.

The guilt only lasted until I read The New Republic's article on The Outsiders. (via Killer Boots) Good to see we are now three months past the election and the DNC infighting is giving Dean the party leadership, and just a few clicks away TNR is already talking about Bush's "lame duckness" already setting in.

Sure I have not read it since it's release in 1992,  but I think I am doing to dig up my copy of "Why Americans Hate Politics" and see how it reads 13 years later.

(Anyone read Whitman's "It's My Party Too" yet? Don't you dare mention Zel Miller as a comparison in the comments.)

Catfight on the Runway

Reading James Wolcott everyday makes you feel like you're part of a larger conversation. Or at least, a somewhat better conversation than the one you're having with the Silverlake folk who are never quite as well read as you would like them to be.

(I have one friend who I trust with these conversations, but for some reason, I trip on my thoughts around him and end up being the one not holding up my end of discussion. Only this one person. It wasn't always like that, and I cannot quite put my finger on why it happens. But I digress. Let us get away from the loathsome inner-dialogues.)

I am proud to say that I finally disagree with Mr. Wolcott. He's completely off-base with his feelings about "Evil Wendy" from Project Runway.  While I am not a fan of her designs, everything she has said in on the "Runway" in the previous episodes about the Brit Chick who could not sew and that mush-mouth Kevin were spot on. Brit Chick was annoying, really couldn't sew, and hampered that team competition. (Austin blaming himself for that one I will never understand.)  Kevin not only was a horrid leader and rather bland designer, but was also just as evil and treacherous as Wendy, if not more. 

I was more upset that Kara, whom to this point I have just loved for both her designs are her class, gave Wendy the complete brush off when leaving the runway.  Makes me think her nice act is heavier on the act than the nice.

(Yeah for me though for joining Mr. Wolcott in picking Bravo over the SOTU. Hopefully Tom over at Killer Boots took my advice and did the same.)

Daughter of Homemade Joysticks

I know I have been lazy lately about posting, so please accept my apology for being even lazier by re-posting a comment I just made in the wondrous Andy Hardy blog.  (If you haven't been keeping up on his posts, shame on you.)

In reference to his ode to Macs on their 21st Birthday, I wrote this:

“I admit that people who love Macs are very much like cult members or fetishists. I’m sure PC people want to sink into the ground when they see us coming because they know we’re about to launch into one of our smug speeches on the inherent superiority of the Macintosh.”

I’ve always referred to this as “Macatitude”, the rather obnoxious behavior that can sometimes beset someone who suddenly finds themselves wanting to place the Apple decal that came with the Mac on their car. (The car being, in most cases, a new VW Beetle.)

I should add though, I grew up with Apples and still have a 5 ¼ inch disk signed by no other than Steve Wozniak himself.  My father, (in what I always thought was an act of rebellion against his father who designed mainframes for IBM from the 1950’s until his retirement in the 1990’s), brought home our first Apple II+ in the late 70’s making our family the first in the area to have a home computer. Even though my sister and I always feel asleep when he tried to teach us “Logo”, the children’s programming language, I have always been grateful that my father made sure we were always comfortable around technology.  (Although I wished that feeling would have extended to childhood horror of having father who made our computer joysticks for games while all the other kids had “real” store bought ones.)

This is how I have been lately, and why I haven't been posting. Other blogs stay cool, but I am still just the girl who had to live down homemade joysticks. 

Bright and sunny in LA and I'm drabber than ever.  (Drabber. Dictionary.com for some reason lists the second meaning of the word first.  Odd.)

At least it looks like Devin in NYC feels that time is speeding up.

Two weeks

I had my annual Sundance rant ready to go, (this time in blog forum), but decided to skip it this year just so no one accused me of just having a case of "sour grapes".

Defamer has already left for Park City, as well as other an eastsider The Skunks of Los Feliz.

Jossip says Sundance is over-run by unofficial sponsors?!?! You don't say! (Ok, that is rant-ish. Sorry. But read Page Six. Again, sorry.)

Does Slamdance realize it is not 2003 any more? Do they know what they were asking for by accepting "Ringers"? Why? Are they looking for fans like these: Ringer 1 and Ringer 2.

If you ARE in Park City... check out Abel Raises Cain at Slamdance.

You ever miss Erma Bombeck?

My mother, like mothers all across this great nation, had the full Erma Bombeck library. (Or should I say, mothers from all ends of the middle class landscape. They probably sold the books at Talbots to go with their sweaters and scarves.)  Quite funny stuff, although a bit dated by the time I read them sometime in the 1980S.

"Does This Mean I'm a Grown-Up?" is a more casual, frazzled Erma.  Some great posts on how her mother feeds the kids candy, or the how the rules are different for her kids than they were for her.

I love that she crashed her husband's bachelor party with her girlfriends drunk, wearing mud masks, hair rollers, slippers, and big pajamas just as the strippers were rolling around and jello-wrestling. (For the record, they only crashed for 15 minutes.)

Found-A spiderpool

I finally finished reading the archives of Search for the Spiderpool. Turns out they found it, and have trekked up there a couple of times to take pictures.  I'm still fascinated, and am going to try to hike up their sometime myself. 

East coast moods, smarts, and cups

For the last couple of days, Devin has been complaining about the weather in NYC.  I teased him about it yesterday, but could tell that a second day of "obligatory '82 degrees in Southern California” comments would not go over well.

All of this brings to mind one of my favorite scores of the holidays, which I am using right now in honor of Devin's mood.

My partner received one as a part of a gift basket from a client, and having never lived (or even visited) NYC, he had no idea what it meant.  I, of course, flipped out.  Eventually, I asked if I could have it, (always a good idea to wait a few weeks before cherry-picking someone's gift baskets), and soon it came home with me.

I am not going to say the cup makes me feel smarter, or that the coffee tastes any better, but it does put me in a different place when I use it. All the Los Angeles sun in the world cannot compete with a blue cup.  (Besides, back with I dated the CMU/Berkley professor, I said I was moving to Los Angeles so I no longer had to think.)

I am glad to see that people with some pretty big brains also have the ceramic Greek cup on their mind.