Good Lord, has it been THAT long since I posted? It appears here as if Tammy Faye's demise left me stricken with typing paralysis and some serious ennui... but really, things have just been busy busy busy.
The street festival/shopkeeping weekend was a bit much. Bele Chere, allegedly the largest free festival in the southeast or something like that, took over my town and nothing was left by late evening except for swollen ankles and an aching back. Gosh, I used to just love festivals, and now they make me feel mostly tired and old. But we made mad money via the sale of stickers and buttons, so I am envisioning a nice hot tub somewhere, somehow, sometime in the near future.
The top-selling bumper stickers for 2007 are:
Coexist. Coexisting is hot, in case you didn't know.
The Peace Sign. We had a white peace sign on black, a black peace sign on white, a white peace sign on blue, and the classic peace sign flanked by the slogan "Back by Popular Demand". World peace might never happen, but you can buy a little piece of peace from me.
Namaste. But I am very very tired of explaining that one to folks.
Stewart/Colbert in 2008. The fantasy ticket.
Impeach Bush, Impeach Cheney First, Impeach 'Em All, Impeach the Bastards, and just plain Impeach. I think that we're getting a message here.
Treehugging Dirt Worshipper and Treehugger. Lots of enviro-friendly tourists here.
But now I need to get some sleep...
NTD
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Paging Miss Manners
I sell a few CDs, videos and books on Amazon, as all three of my loyal readers know. I only occasionally e-mail to inform customers that a shipment is coming; it seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? You order, and the seller delivers. I have never felt that the etiquette requirements extend beyond this, unless the customer inquires about a purchase.
Obviously, I need a lesson in customer care. I got one today.
I ordered a Dexter Romweber CD (of indie southern rock duo Flat Duo Jets fame)from an Amazon Marketplace seller last night. And a few minutes ago, I received this e-mail:
Hi, thanks for your order. Nibbles and his bunny brothers have taken your CD from our shelves, inspected and polished it with their whiskers to make sure it was in the best condition. They packed it with hay and they hopped on down the street to the post office to send off your package on this very day. Nibbles and his brothers can't wait for you to come back shop with us again some time. Thank you once again.
This is cute, right? Almost Kute with a capital "K", right? And if I was buying children's lit, or a Wiggles DVD, I'd be all about it. But I bought a Dexter Romweber CD, a badass motherf**cking indie guitar god who inspired the White Stripes... I'm not so sure that the bunnies really wanted to polish a CD that begins with "Rockin' Dead Man" and ends with "Prison Called Life".
But maybe Miss Manners wants us to send little notes to our customers. I'll have to think about this.
NTD
Obviously, I need a lesson in customer care. I got one today.
I ordered a Dexter Romweber CD (of indie southern rock duo Flat Duo Jets fame)from an Amazon Marketplace seller last night. And a few minutes ago, I received this e-mail:
Hi, thanks for your order. Nibbles and his bunny brothers have taken your CD from our shelves, inspected and polished it with their whiskers to make sure it was in the best condition. They packed it with hay and they hopped on down the street to the post office to send off your package on this very day. Nibbles and his brothers can't wait for you to come back shop with us again some time. Thank you once again.
This is cute, right? Almost Kute with a capital "K", right? And if I was buying children's lit, or a Wiggles DVD, I'd be all about it. But I bought a Dexter Romweber CD, a badass motherf**cking indie guitar god who inspired the White Stripes... I'm not so sure that the bunnies really wanted to polish a CD that begins with "Rockin' Dead Man" and ends with "Prison Called Life".
But maybe Miss Manners wants us to send little notes to our customers. I'll have to think about this.
NTD
Who's Harry Potter?
There. I said it.
I'm not anti-Harry... I have just chosen to live outside of Potterville.
NTD
I'm not anti-Harry... I have just chosen to live outside of Potterville.
NTD
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Night of the Bloodsuckers aka Vampire Hookers aka Cemetery Girls aka Sensuous Vampires (1978)
Dear God, I should have watched this name-challenged trash film before I sold it on Amazon this morning. It would still be mine.
I rewound the video to test it before packing it up and was hooked by the hookers... it's just too funny, with John Carradine spouting poetry while Charlie's Angels-type fanged bimbos complain about never getting to go to the beach since they died 134 years ago.
Although it seems pointlessly indulgent to speak out in favor of out-of-print movies, you never know who might google this post up - last year someone e-mailed me and was heartened by my review of Curt-Hiss the Drug-Free Snake, which had been one of her perverse childhood favorites.
Sooooo... thumbs up for Night of the Bloodsuckers!
NTD
Dear God, I should have watched this name-challenged trash film before I sold it on Amazon this morning. It would still be mine.
I rewound the video to test it before packing it up and was hooked by the hookers... it's just too funny, with John Carradine spouting poetry while Charlie's Angels-type fanged bimbos complain about never getting to go to the beach since they died 134 years ago.
Although it seems pointlessly indulgent to speak out in favor of out-of-print movies, you never know who might google this post up - last year someone e-mailed me and was heartened by my review of Curt-Hiss the Drug-Free Snake, which had been one of her perverse childhood favorites.
Sooooo... thumbs up for Night of the Bloodsuckers!
NTD
Monday, July 16, 2007
I love spending a day or two entirely absent from the online life. When the cell phone is useless, my world gets even better. It's hard to BE HERE NOW when I am worrying about what is happening OVER THERE, for instance.
Last week Stewart and I stayed at a cabin bordering the Cherokee National Forest for about twenty hours of being here now-ness. No other humans, no television, no radio, no computer, no phone... just trees, stars, knotty pine, and a hot tub. And boiled peanuts and a bottle of champagne.
One distressing thing about 21st century life is our constant access to everything via the internet and the telephone. I miss attending a festival in a field in which no one is on a cell phone yakking it up or whipping out their laptop, high on wi-fi. In the good old days, one just had to talk to one's neighbors and create community where one happened to be standing.
I have to pay attention to the network I have created with myspace and e-mail, of course. And it has been wonderful this year while my daughter Sarah is Spain to have her talk to me via Skype. And sometimes, contacting a person via myspace is the only way to get an interview for the newspaper. And I can be as obsessive as anybody on a slow day, checking my e-mail fifty times and reading every story on salon.com (or gofugyourself.typepad.com, or the Onion). But when I drive away, I appreciate the vacation from everylittlegoddamnirresistabledetail.
Trying my best to get up offa this thing and be here now -
NTD
Last week Stewart and I stayed at a cabin bordering the Cherokee National Forest for about twenty hours of being here now-ness. No other humans, no television, no radio, no computer, no phone... just trees, stars, knotty pine, and a hot tub. And boiled peanuts and a bottle of champagne.
One distressing thing about 21st century life is our constant access to everything via the internet and the telephone. I miss attending a festival in a field in which no one is on a cell phone yakking it up or whipping out their laptop, high on wi-fi. In the good old days, one just had to talk to one's neighbors and create community where one happened to be standing.
I have to pay attention to the network I have created with myspace and e-mail, of course. And it has been wonderful this year while my daughter Sarah is Spain to have her talk to me via Skype. And sometimes, contacting a person via myspace is the only way to get an interview for the newspaper. And I can be as obsessive as anybody on a slow day, checking my e-mail fifty times and reading every story on salon.com (or gofugyourself.typepad.com, or the Onion). But when I drive away, I appreciate the vacation from everylittlegoddamnirresistabledetail.
Trying my best to get up offa this thing and be here now -
NTD
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Tobacco
I hate cigarettes. However, tobacco has become an integral part of my retail business (this is the post in which I once again shamelessly try to rationalize my ugly hypocrisy). Back when I bought this wee little fledgling store and I foolishly believed that it would be easy to own TWO stores 300 miles apart (my original store was alive and well in south Georgia) AND
raise two daughters with a minimum of effort - hahahahahaha - well, anyway, the newly-purchased shop sold cigarettes. And I've sold them ever since.
I bought the second store way back in my thirties, when everything seemed possible. I think that there's something about having small children which amps up the adrenaline 24/7 and the delusions of grandeur only grind to a halt when one day you're fortysomething and feel like lying down on the couch for, say, about six months. And suddenly - well, in my case, anyway - the idea of sitting on one's ass for two hours a day and daring to call one's self A WRITER becomes the perfect excuse to practice one's true passion. Not writing, of course, but SITTING ON ONE'S ASS. I suspect this is why many people become meditators or barflies too - just to sit still and not feel guilty about it. Devote a few years to sitting, and before you know it, you have a column in a newspaper. Or you're a meditation instructor. Or an alcoholic. Sitting still can be a beautiful thing which can become A Way.
But that's all a digression which maybe I'll one day turn into a book like The Secret and get a piece of that self-help action. I was meaning to focus on cigarettes here.
So every year the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company holds a display contest, aka their Retailer of the Year Contest. The first year I was looking for something to amuse my children and employees with, so we taped a whole bunch of cigarette packs onto a board and made - ta dah! - a flag out of American Spirit packs. Then we made a bikini out of cartons and we photographed my friend Heather wearing it next to the flag and, next thing you know, we took second place and were sent a big prize.
We were hooked. The next year we staged an elaborate Wizard of Oz photoshoot featuring a bunch of Dragon Con friends, a flying sock monkey, an evil cigarette additive Witch and a good Glinda who represented additive-free American Spirits, a garden trellis disguised as the American Spirit rainbow, a yellow brick road going into the store....
... surprisingly, this overbloated thing only took third place. But we cashed our check and decided that maybe the tobacco company considered the Wiz to be a little too child-friendly for a product which can, after all, give a person lung cancer.
The next year I created a giant Mona Lisa, a smaller Scream a la Edvard Munch, Picasso's Dove of Peace, and called our little gallery The Art of Smoking. I knew we had a winner - we took the Grand Prize and collected our five grand.
After that there was a South American theme with Spirit rolling tobacco tumbling out of Heather's Carmen Miranda headscarf. A Hurray for Hollywood wall piece with Heather as a tapdancing giant cigarette carton. A giant dreadie head, smiling and juggling cigarettes. And last year my friend Tadd mugged in black leather holding a guitar made of American Spirit cartons in front of a collage featuring a homemade Spirit indie band. All were runners-up, and along with the money the shop has collected a CD player, an iPod, a jacket, a television, two digital cameras - almost twelve grand in cash and prizes over the years.
Last night I downloaded the photos of this year's entry. And - ladies and gentlemen - I think that we have a winner. We'll know in September. They've doubled the grand prize to ten thousand dollars - and that's a lot of college tuition for my kids. Or several vacations, Mexican food, a bunch of concerts and a hot tub. Or a nice retirement fund (just kidding!!!).
I wish that there were other kinds of competitions - I'm not really proud of shilling for tobacco. But I appreciate the opportunity to be creative and to get paid for it. This part-time writing gig has not even hit the $5000 mark after dozens and dozens of political columns, interviews, music reviews and the occasional cover story. So I do the pragmatic mom thing, which is to provide for my children and myself the best way that I know how - running a shop, entering annual display contests, and writing (aka sitting on my ass).
Keeping my fingers crossed -
NTD
raise two daughters with a minimum of effort - hahahahahaha - well, anyway, the newly-purchased shop sold cigarettes. And I've sold them ever since.
I bought the second store way back in my thirties, when everything seemed possible. I think that there's something about having small children which amps up the adrenaline 24/7 and the delusions of grandeur only grind to a halt when one day you're fortysomething and feel like lying down on the couch for, say, about six months. And suddenly - well, in my case, anyway - the idea of sitting on one's ass for two hours a day and daring to call one's self A WRITER becomes the perfect excuse to practice one's true passion. Not writing, of course, but SITTING ON ONE'S ASS. I suspect this is why many people become meditators or barflies too - just to sit still and not feel guilty about it. Devote a few years to sitting, and before you know it, you have a column in a newspaper. Or you're a meditation instructor. Or an alcoholic. Sitting still can be a beautiful thing which can become A Way.
But that's all a digression which maybe I'll one day turn into a book like The Secret and get a piece of that self-help action. I was meaning to focus on cigarettes here.
So every year the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company holds a display contest, aka their Retailer of the Year Contest. The first year I was looking for something to amuse my children and employees with, so we taped a whole bunch of cigarette packs onto a board and made - ta dah! - a flag out of American Spirit packs. Then we made a bikini out of cartons and we photographed my friend Heather wearing it next to the flag and, next thing you know, we took second place and were sent a big prize.
We were hooked. The next year we staged an elaborate Wizard of Oz photoshoot featuring a bunch of Dragon Con friends, a flying sock monkey, an evil cigarette additive Witch and a good Glinda who represented additive-free American Spirits, a garden trellis disguised as the American Spirit rainbow, a yellow brick road going into the store....
... surprisingly, this overbloated thing only took third place. But we cashed our check and decided that maybe the tobacco company considered the Wiz to be a little too child-friendly for a product which can, after all, give a person lung cancer.
The next year I created a giant Mona Lisa, a smaller Scream a la Edvard Munch, Picasso's Dove of Peace, and called our little gallery The Art of Smoking. I knew we had a winner - we took the Grand Prize and collected our five grand.
After that there was a South American theme with Spirit rolling tobacco tumbling out of Heather's Carmen Miranda headscarf. A Hurray for Hollywood wall piece with Heather as a tapdancing giant cigarette carton. A giant dreadie head, smiling and juggling cigarettes. And last year my friend Tadd mugged in black leather holding a guitar made of American Spirit cartons in front of a collage featuring a homemade Spirit indie band. All were runners-up, and along with the money the shop has collected a CD player, an iPod, a jacket, a television, two digital cameras - almost twelve grand in cash and prizes over the years.
Last night I downloaded the photos of this year's entry. And - ladies and gentlemen - I think that we have a winner. We'll know in September. They've doubled the grand prize to ten thousand dollars - and that's a lot of college tuition for my kids. Or several vacations, Mexican food, a bunch of concerts and a hot tub. Or a nice retirement fund (just kidding!!!).
I wish that there were other kinds of competitions - I'm not really proud of shilling for tobacco. But I appreciate the opportunity to be creative and to get paid for it. This part-time writing gig has not even hit the $5000 mark after dozens and dozens of political columns, interviews, music reviews and the occasional cover story. So I do the pragmatic mom thing, which is to provide for my children and myself the best way that I know how - running a shop, entering annual display contests, and writing (aka sitting on my ass).
Keeping my fingers crossed -
NTD
Friday, July 6, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
The Double Feature from Seventies Hell
Grand Theft Auto (1977). Written, directed by and starring Ron Howard.
Memorable quote: Sparky, think you can hotwire this mother?
Monkey Hustle (1976). Featuring Rudy Ray Moore and a cast of one thousand afros.
Memorable quote: It ain't legal and it sure ain't safe...but it do seem worthwhile!
While my daughter is at the theatre with friends watching Transformers, I am sitting here editing an interview to the soothing disco sounds of Monkey Hustle and the jarring explosions of Grand Theft Auto. I'll take my low-budget seventies drive-in crap while wearing sweatpants and sipping on a gin&tonic over any other afternoon entertainment here in south Georgia.
But later on tonight I'll probably get cabin fever and look for friends to watch the fireworks with.
Happy 4th to all,
NTD
Memorable quote: Sparky, think you can hotwire this mother?
Monkey Hustle (1976). Featuring Rudy Ray Moore and a cast of one thousand afros.
Memorable quote: It ain't legal and it sure ain't safe...but it do seem worthwhile!
While my daughter is at the theatre with friends watching Transformers, I am sitting here editing an interview to the soothing disco sounds of Monkey Hustle and the jarring explosions of Grand Theft Auto. I'll take my low-budget seventies drive-in crap while wearing sweatpants and sipping on a gin&tonic over any other afternoon entertainment here in south Georgia.
But later on tonight I'll probably get cabin fever and look for friends to watch the fireworks with.
Happy 4th to all,
NTD
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Call the White House
If you are outraged by President Bush's decision to commute Scooter Libby's prison sentence, call the White House and let them know.
(202) 456-6213
(202) 456-1111
(202) 456-1414
NTD
(202) 456-6213
(202) 456-1111
(202) 456-1414
NTD
It's Official...
... I was reading the Emmy nominations, and I have never seen a single nominated television show. Not even the good ones which friends and my employees discuss while I stand around like a confused nursing home resident, oblivious to plots and characters.
I am officially out of touch.
NTD
I am officially out of touch.
NTD
Monday, July 2, 2007
Guilty Pleasure
It's the July version of my semi-annual Bad Film Festival. Tonight begins with the Johnny Depp classic Private Resort. It's an abysmal piece of filmmaking from 1985 about two teenagers... let's see, the box reads "They're looking for hot times. And they came to the right place". Rob Morrow co-stars, with appearances by Andrew Clay (pre-"Dice") and the fine actor Hector Elizondo.
But the important thing here is Johnny Depp's barely legal naked body. Am I a perverted middle-aged woman? I prefer to believe that the sight of JD's perfect ass - before 21 Jump Street, before Captain Jack Sparrow - is just an irresistible force in the universe.
Gotta go and finish watching this, uh, important moment in Depp history.
NTD
But the important thing here is Johnny Depp's barely legal naked body. Am I a perverted middle-aged woman? I prefer to believe that the sight of JD's perfect ass - before 21 Jump Street, before Captain Jack Sparrow - is just an irresistible force in the universe.
Gotta go and finish watching this, uh, important moment in Depp history.
NTD
Fun Headline of the Day
Natalie Portman Joins Other Celebrities To Save Baby Guerillas
I clicked on this alternet.org headline hoping to see a photo of Portman clutching a baby sporting a Che onesie while held aloft by a pair of Zapatistas - but go back to spellcheck, you liberals, and change that to "gorillas". Instead I was reminded of how few gorillas are left, the problems in Rwanda, and I am feeling the white American guilt before my second cup of coffee.
Next time, Natalie, I want left-wing baby shots!
NTD
I clicked on this alternet.org headline hoping to see a photo of Portman clutching a baby sporting a Che onesie while held aloft by a pair of Zapatistas - but go back to spellcheck, you liberals, and change that to "gorillas". Instead I was reminded of how few gorillas are left, the problems in Rwanda, and I am feeling the white American guilt before my second cup of coffee.
Next time, Natalie, I want left-wing baby shots!
NTD
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Don't Move Here
It's summertime, and the blogging has not been so easy. My shop is doing gangbusters - I hear numerous complaints by the locals about tourists taking over the town. My answer is along the lines of this: well, that's what happens when you relocate in a tourist town, honey. In fact, most of us decided to move here ourselves our being one of those annoying tourists. There's hardly a southern accent left in Asheville other than mine. And I'm not from here either.
However, when the dozen or so Birkenstocked camera-bagged newly-arrived squeal to me daily that they are thinking of moving here... I tell them that there are no jobs, real estate is sky-high, traffice sucks, and the air quality is declining. I wish that I was lying, but I'm not.
So Don't Move Here, y'all. But in the meantime, shop at my store all you want. I'll need the money when gentrification hits my block and the rent triples in order to make the street safe for Starbucks.
NTD
However, when the dozen or so Birkenstocked camera-bagged newly-arrived squeal to me daily that they are thinking of moving here... I tell them that there are no jobs, real estate is sky-high, traffice sucks, and the air quality is declining. I wish that I was lying, but I'm not.
So Don't Move Here, y'all. But in the meantime, shop at my store all you want. I'll need the money when gentrification hits my block and the rent triples in order to make the street safe for Starbucks.
NTD
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