Quote of the Day

Artists are people who say I can't fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight and a half by eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

News of the Weird

Hell has become Holiday on Ice:

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=95B8F233-3048-5C12-0029F56B532B8EC8

Several years ago I met with my congressman on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project. It was 1999 and I - ironically, not even a pot smoker - answered MPP's call and met with Republican representative Jack Kingston. The subject that week was H.R. 3064, a D.C. spending bill which one particularly enthusiastic anti-marijuana rep - Bob Barr of Georgia - had shoved in an amendment which would overturn D.C.'s medical marijuana initiative. At the time, Bob Barr was an outspoken right-wing meanie (Clinton-hating, gun-toting) who claimed that medical marijuana was a 'dangerous mind-altering drug'.

Flash-forward to today. Former representative Barr is now lobbying for the Marijuana Policy Project(!). Read the article linked above.

NTD

Little Miss High School

(Note to reader: see post below this for context.)

Okay, okay, my Libra self has been thinking about the thirteen years of educational constraints before the relative bliss of college, and ... it really did suck. But the difficulties were exacerbated by a crushing introvertedness and awkwardness, not so much by external pressures but by the captivity of my own hypersensitivity and inability to deal with people. It probably also did not help that I was generally the last person picked for teams, and with good reason. But pain is a good teacher, and I am far more empathetic and kind than I might have been if communicating with other life forms had come easily to me. I think that the years of introverted observation were useful. Plus, it seems that it was all I could do given my extraordinary shyness.

Let's just say that, when I watch the Breakfast Club, it's the Ally Sheedy character who captivates me more than Molly Ringwald's.

It's the school play that brings on this melancholy - this anti-nostalgia for my youth. Plus, my daughter and I went shopping for a pageant dress this afternoon. We bought a secondhand periwinkle dress which gaped in the front. "No problem", she said. "I'll just pad my bra. All the girls do it."

Let me get this straight; my daughter - whose greatest glories include stage-diving at an Anti-Flag show and standing muddy and sunburned atop a garbage can at 3 a.m. to glimpse the dancing animal costumes while the Flaming Lips thrash out "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" -
this same daughter is looking into manicures and matching shoes and fretting over tanning appointments and alterations in order to display herself as Little Miss High School with an overstuffed bra and a dreadlocked beehive? My head is spinning.

But the sunny side of this equation is: at least my daughter is not crippled with shyness and low self-esteem like I was. She seems confident that this pageant experience is just another crazy moment in high school, and takes it in stride. And the difficult part of being a mother is standing back and letting her do it.

I think I'll go take several cleansing breaths now...

NTD

School Days

The play - Voices from the High School - went off without a hitch in the school cafeteria last night. My daughter, who directed the one-act, had a serenity about her which she later explained so eloquently to me. "It's not me making an ass of myself. If they screw up, everyone's watching them. I just want it to be over." Okay, she's not so compassionate, but who would be at this point, after weeks and weeks of practice and no-shows and whining all around? She needs to start studying for her AP History exam.

While I love seeing the fruits of my daughter's labor, as an adult I have always hated walking into the school buildings. It's always a painful flashback sequence of shy girl hell, weird smells, and having such a tiny circle of friends that a single absence left us misfits bereft and awkwardly alone. I could frequently garner a teacher's pet position, but eventually realized that this was not particularly a privilege. It left me being bullied into sharing homework and notes, or even worse - being ignored. I imagine that some people genuinely look fondly back at their school days, but for me, the honor roll, a few wonderful teachers, poetry and art classes, and making perhaps a half dozen good friends are the only positive experiences that I recall.

And all of this floods me like some ancient psychosis every time I have to go to a school function. Needless to say, I could not stomach more than a few P.T.O. meetings. Thank goodness my ex-husband actually seemed to enjoy taking over that part of the parent thing. Outside of school I could be Supermommy, organizing pony parties and sleepovers for twelve girls without breaking a sweat. But a single parent-teacher meeting can drive me directly to margaritaville, hold the salt.

So it was a little gratifying when I walked up to the drama teacher after the play and he confessed to me, still nervous as a cat, that he spent a few pre-play minutes in the restroom vomiting. He has always struck me as a formerly awkward student, a lot like me. I really understood.

And now, the next hurdle: my dreadlocked, countercultural angry daughter signed up for the high school beauty contest. Partly as a dare she set up to involve other friends in this fundraiser, but partly because even calloused, be-dreaded, Goodwill-clad girls deep down want to be pretty little princesses too. I am even willing to buy the sequined gown - I blame some of this on letting her go to preschool in princess costumes and red tutus. She has had a crazy flamboyant style ever since.

The worst if this: a couple of days ago when I went to get the oil changed in her little Ford truck, I found a post-it note on the rear-view mirror that said "Mystic Tan" with a date and hour. My God, my baby is gonna get herself airbrushed.

Where did I go wrong?

Note to self: bring anti-nausea medication to the pageant.

NTD

Breakfast at Snooky's

I have no taste for diamonds or gold at Tiffany's, but I do love the grits and cheese at Snooky's. I'm still flying high from seventeen cups of coffee (but they were LITTLE cups) and catching up with my friend Cindy. Although we have little in common other than daughters the same age and an absurd love for Las Vegas, we tend to meet up at a restaurant a few times a year and exchange gossip. And hey, I walked to the restaurant, which might have expended a small handful of calories to offset the morning dose of fat, salt and refined-and-bleached hominy.

My daughter's directorial debut is tonight. Even if the play sucks - and she worries that it will - I could not be prouder of my sixteen year old.

I must return several phone calls now - the potential house painter, the doctor's office, my shop, the wholesale postcard company...

By the way: R.I.P. Life Magazine

NTD

Let's Dance

While perusing Wikiquote, Brainy Quote and ThinkExist yesterday in search of possible lines to borrow for stickers, I got lost in the dance section. Sometimes the best dance lines come from historical figures not remembered so much for their dance skills:

We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once. - Friedrich Nietzsche

How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance? - Hermann Hesse

Now, my dancing skills are quite limited. Although I took two years of tap and ballet from ages 4 - 6 from the Marilyn Youmans School of Dance (plus baton twirling, an important finishing school skill for southern girls in the 1960s) and later in college took dance classes in order to avoid P.E. classes which involved balls and equipment, I always suspect that I appear pretty awkward on the dance floor. But - as white folks everywhere do - once I'm out there, I convince myself that I am a Soul Train dancer. And I hope that what I lack in ability, I make up in enthusiasm.

However, I have noticed that many people who comment on my dancing suggest that I must have imbibed liberally in order to display such a lack of dignity . If only this were true.

I watched an Ellen Degeneres clip on YouTube recently. When I gaze at her shaking it beneath the harsh fluorescents surrounded by an adoring all-white soccer mom audience, I am suddenly glad that I prefer darkness and crowded dance floors. But I'm sort of happy that Ellen is willing to do what she does - perhaps she becomes an inspiration for Baptist and Lutheran housewives and husbands who need a gentle nudge: if Ellen can dance badly on national television, then maybe I can too.

All I know is that when I dance, the following happens: my intellect takes a break while my body takes over, I get very happy, and I feel incredibly sexy. And, my back doesn't hurt.

NTD

The Sticker Challenge

My friend Brad decided to go back into the sticker business and needed a partner. Actually, he has the ideas, the festivals lined up, and the old screens - but no money. So I bought the chopper, the emulsion, and the vinyl, and soon we'll be some sort of casual business partners. If this works out, I'll buy a button maker too - my friend Srini began his sticker/button/shirt business at unamerican.com and stickernation.com years ago and has found a sizable black-and-white rebellion market out there. Maybe it's time for two middle-aged people who can no longer find a grilled cheese on a Ratdog parking lot to find another source of secondary income. Brad and I have huddled on Mexican blankets and beneath moldering EZ-Ups since the early nineties selling his t-shirts and my jewelry, his airbrushed chairs and my American Spirit cigarettes, his stone and cholla cactus pipes and my Grateful Dead pinback buttons. But tour is going away - Jerry Garcia died almost twelve years ago, Phish broke up and Widespread Panic just doesn't always host the renegade parking lot vendor scene which used to be profitable. I gave most of it up over the last couple of years, only occasionally getting the travel bug and heading up to Atlanta, to Memphis and sometimes beyond.

Now I have to come up with ideas for my share of the vinyl. I brainstormed yesterday afternoon and consulted with my daughter. We came up with a few themes and ripoffs:

Trendy Themes: Cthulu, Veganism, Unicorns, Zombies, Gnomes, Belly Dancing
Perennial Favorites: Beer, Marijuana (Bong Hits for Jesus, Anyone?), Dogs
Subjects We Hope To Make Into National Trends: Tofu, Bluegrass, Pluto

But we're still working on it.

NTD

I spent Friday evening digging through my bookshelf... a couple of sections have gotten dusty from neglect. It's spring and even housekeeping-challenged packrats such as myself feel the urge to let go of a few items and clean the rest. Among the oddities which I listed on Amazon last night in the hope of some customer who might consider these to be needful things:

- Visualizations of the Dog Standards, Alice M. Wagner, 1959. I must have picked this one up at the thrift store after watching Best in Show. The book features hundreds of black and white photographs of show dogs such as Blakeen Ding Ding, standard poodle; Honey Hollow Stormi Rudio, Great Dane; and Bull Terrier The White Rock of Coolyn Hill. Turning the pages of this book reminds me of my own dog limitations and failures. In my own world, the dogs I have owned include: Aretha aka Urethra, nervous Shelter Mutt who peed on every square inch of installed carpet; Sadie, the Rottweiler who never acknowledged that she was a grown dog and crawled into the lap of any unsuspecting visitor; and Diva, the Apricot Poodle who had spent her formative years in the lap of a rich woman and gave contemptuous looks at us for reducing her living standards to our own.

- How to Remember Names and Faces, Edward Stoddard, 1958. Part of Nelson Doubleday's Personal Success Program, this book includes a set of face cards with attributes on the rear to test one's memory. If I had to date one of these suit-and-tie men, I might choose Phillip Burman, Unmarried Sophomore and Jazz Hobbyist. He's kind of movie star hunky. I would avoid Leslie Evans, Golf Player and husband of Gertrude - he looks kind of shifty. But I am mesmerized by the goateed Werner, Freelance Artist who Loves to Ski. He's kind of the beatnik of the bunch. I might pal around with Susan Taylor, Bachelor Girl from Chicago. She likes to Dance and Read, just like me.
Okay, I know that in 2007 we live in a weird world, but between memory books and doggie tomes, the 50s look like strange times indeed.

- Secrets of the UFO, Don Elkins with Carla Ruekert, 1977. They were channeling when channeling wasn't cool. I can't really be critical of extraterrestrial reincarnated meditational hypnotic musings, but something about this book, for me, induces bouts of sleepiness. Perhaps that's the point? To lower my resistance to The Message? But I like the space needle drawing on the cover with the flying saucers surrounding it, and I'm a sucker for self-published works (which, apparently, is still in print).

All of these classic works are available through Amazon on my seller's page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html/104-0316211-1148773?ie=UTF8&sellerID=AMDK6WLOIP2S

NTD

I was able to behold the majesty that is the great poet Saul Williams this week when he spoke at Western Carolina University. Many thanks to my friend Heather Blue for turning me on to him several years ago via the poetry film Slam Nation.

http://www.myspace.com/saulwilliams

Poetry is the deification of reality. - Edith Sitwell

NTD

The Bad Film Festival Part II

I continued the Bad Film Festival with a partner in crime. It's quite a feat to drag my boyfriend down to my personal level of sordid taste, so we went with classically bad films - aka camp. Last week's entertainment included Barbarella, One Million Years B.C. and Zardoz. I thought that the widespread prevalence of breasts might help him in his personal transition from his critically-acclaimed film preferences down to the worst of the worst. Several months ago, he almost finished Deathsport before falling asleep, which I consider a personal victory. And on a dark and stormy night he perused my video library and watched The Van all alone - one of my all-time favorite terrible films. He even learned to play the film's theme song 'Chevy Van' on the guitar, which was proof that this man is my soul mate.

But the sensory overload of low-budget scenery and stilted performances sent me reeling back to the VHS room, where I secretly grabbed my beloved copy of Citizen Kane and snuck into the bedroom alone. There I watched the most perfect American film in a fetal position. Sometimes my soul craves the unsnarkable.

NTD

The Bad Film Festival

The bad film festival in my living room continues. Last night I was afraid that the John Candy/Eugene Levy anti-classic Going Berserk might actually have merit - thus dampening the spirit of my VHS-a-thon. But I shouldn't have worried. This 1983 comedy features John Candy in a genuine struggle - he's a wonderful, subtle actor and it shows, even as virtually every scene is designed to sink the careers of all involved. Thankfully, that didn't happen. And since the popular movies of that year included Porky's II and Flashdance, we won't remember 1983 for its high film standards, anyway.

(Let me take that back. Thanks, Wikipedia, for ruining my life by forcing me to fact-check every statement I make any more. Great movies I loved from 1983: The Dresser, Koyaanisqatsi, The King of Comedy, A Christmas Story, Zelig, Silkwood.)

But there's something cringingly, masochistically pleasurable about watching bad films, even sans a Mystery Science Theatre-style partner to sit beside me making snarky comments while wielding the extra-large flogger.

Tonight's Feature: I'm hoping that a Raiders of the Lost Ark-ripoff from 1982 named The Ark of the Sun God will not disappoint. I kind of like the Olivia Newton-John style bandana on leading man David Warbeck's head featured on the box.

NTD

vagina vagina vagina... scrotum!

Good Lord. First it's "The Higher Power of Lucky" with that devil word "scrotum". And now this?

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/Suspended_students_Vagina_no_big_deal/20070307-121037-4109r/

Gotta protect the children, I guess.

Vaginally yours,

NTD

bean counter blues

It's that time again, when every random receipt is held up to the light and scrutinized in order to answer the burning question of the moment: is this a business expense? or is it eligible for itemizing? or is it just paper scavenged from a Taco Bell bag and accidentally thrown into the Envelope of Blessed Tax Relief?

This has been my evening entertainment since Friday. I also have been watching a double-feature nightly in order to ease the pain - but not too much. I'm clearing out the VHS collection of forgettable low-budget B movies which accumulate as the unsalable leftovers of my Amazon Marketplace Seller collection. When I can sit through country star Jerry Reed's vanity tale of drug addiction and redemption via brotherly love in What Comes Around and then boldly pair it with the eighties Italian-American True Love - a wretched comedy involving garish blouses held up by shoulder pads and the men who love the shoulders underneath it all - it somehow all lessens the pain of posting four hundred checks by hand in an old-fashioned ledger book (yes, I refuse to modernize and use the computer).

Tonight I will peruse the possibilities... I think that I'm in the mood for something Australian in that bland way that drives one to smack one's self on the forehead and exclaim, "This film is not just freewheeling and artsy, it's a boring piece of ****!". Or maybe something notoriously awful from the blaxploitation shelf. I'm thinking Rudy Ray Moore.

In any case, today is the day that I hope to get prepared to drop the entire financial mess at the accountant's. And it cannot appear to be the mess that it is right now.

NTD

Help Me, Wanda

After almost a dozen e-mails and a few phone calls, I am set to interview comedian Wanda Sykes on Friday. Sometimes there is so much effort involved in arranging a short telephone interview - I am beginning to understand why the nasty paparazzi exists. If you're not frighteningly aggressive, no one even pays attention. And I don't want to behave like a crazed stalker in order to get my seven hundred words. It is not my style. But I try to remember that no one outside of this county has even heard of my little newspaper; why should they talk to me? In this case, the answer is that Sykes is appearing at the university at the end of the month and I am, after all, part of the local press.

So Wanda, please do not forget to call as scheduled. Please, digital recorder, record BOTH parts of the telephone conversation rather than just my voice as you disastrously did ten days ago while interviewing an elderly jazz musician. I cried after that one, which I understand is not very professional. Please have everything go smoothly, for once.

NTD

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. - Anais Nin

Fox News: Anna Nicole is Greater American than U.S. Soldiers

Just an observation:

Why did Fox News show the rhinestone-draped coffin of Ms. Smith hundreds of times, while declining to air footage of any of the flag-covered coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq?

NTD

loss of the ego via the myspace thingie

Life is a series of humiliations designed by some cosmic trickster who desires to watch the ego shrink and flatten until it disappears. But then you're dead, which I suppose is the big joke.

I am speaking, of course, of technological needful things such as computers and cell phones and remote controls. They all appear to be so necessary; and yet people such as myself, people who were annoying teacher's pets and Miss Thing of the Land of Dean's Lists back decades ago, who grew egos from a remarkable ability to identify gerunds and participles and split infinitives and who would never, ever write such run-on sentences as this back in the day - people like me ride the short bus of technology today, pitied by small children who can slay online monsters in fourteen dimensions while instant messaging nine of their best friends and simultaneously downloading a half-dozen songs.

Translation: Myspace is driving me crazy. I can never discern whether I'm sending a private request for an interview or publishing it for the online public to see. My printer is not working. I long for a pre-computer world even as I spew Pavlovian saliva while booting up the Dell. I even wish for a pre-Myspace world, when potential interviewees had to hire their friends to develop websites and publish e-mail addresses. It's all so consolidated now via Myspace, so convenient and frightening. And my daughter's sixteen year old friends have the most sophisticated pages, while the elders don't have fourteen hours/day to choose the proper layout and hipster user name and coordinating colors and twenty photoshopped pictures. Oh God, am I jealous of teenagers now?

This is what you have reduced me to, Myspace... a bitter woman with a mediocre web page.

But other than this, things are just peachy.

NTD