no more underwires!!!

a friend tells me she posted an internet ad to find some romance. and a fella she's been out with twice said to her, 'you have big boobs!! what size are you?!!'

nobody has ever asked me that, though there was an incident with wesson oil once, but that's for another day and a more self-centered entry. so, let's get back to the issue: does his comment not seem wildly inappropriate?

my friend says there are incentives to see him again: he invited her to a rolling stones show next weekend. it's his treat. should she go?

as for his amplitude observation, here's how she responded. 'i told him that he hasn't seen big boobs if he thinks mine are.'

what could such vulgarity so early in the week augur?

the song remains the same

just heard 'with points all her own, sitting way up high, way up firm and high.' that song, 'night moves,' must be around 25 years old. my brother had that album and i can picture it exactly, black background, white writing at an angle, bob in a leather jacket. i liked it. a lot. it was so very wraught with longing and nostalgia, though he was yearning for episodes that were far away from my life.

but i was listening to that song now cause k sent me a mixed cd—a compilation from our vacation of songs that lodged themselves in our heads and demanded that we sing them out loud—and bob seger's on that superb rotation. and to hear him husk those words so earnestly, to add that extra, 'mmmh-mmm, way up firm and high' made me check out my own rack—er, i mean, made me smile.

and it made me think of r kelly. i'm not especially a fan and when that song, 'feelin' on your booty' came out a few years ago and i saw the video i burst out laughing. cause he was doing this weird falsetto/castrati warble on the word 'boo-oo-tay...boo-oo-tay,' while making a sort of round gesture, miming the shape of a booty, with his hands.

but now i see where r kelly comes from. cause 'way up firm high' with such a seriousness is the same kind of a foolishness. but it's delicious too, especially when you're around 10 and sex seems so forbidding and exciting and puberty still seems like it could be promising terrain.

oops, i did it again

i'm not that cynical.

it's true. how do i know? i re-upped on a dating site. by which i mean i paid to access even more photos of people i'll never contact and who'll likely never contact me. even more cherses of fellas i might contact who very probably will not reply (the ego takes a bruising). even more guys who'll do some weird thing called "a wink" which is not really possible on a computer (and also, have you ever seen me wink...no. why? because a) it's stupid and if you want to say hello, by god, say hello and b) i actually cannot do it physically. i had a winking contest with a nephew once and he laughed and laughed because my winks looks simply like i'm squinting a whole lot).

i realized the borat/stroke of the cheek dream is about two people i know. one of them, an italian dude who's a friend but at one time for a brief time was more, who was here this year visiting. and on a few occasions on his visit he reached across the table and did just that. stroked my cheek. which seems to me to be intimate. and then he flew away. and the skin on my face felt and still feels a little exposed.

but hope springs. or i'm bored. and a little too much by myself these here days. and my friend convinced me last night to pay that cashmoney. and to get some new clothes while i'm at it. she gave sage advice. i gave her dinner.

in a boratty reverie

dreamt that sacha baron-cohen had a crush on me and stroked my cheek very tenderly. how he loved me then! but when i went to find him for a little huggin' and a'kissin' he disappeared.

just posted an ad on craigslist to sell some furniture of mine since moving time is nigh. and i have too many things. but this sacha bc stuff is in my head. and i am getting irritated with my lack of initiative in the romance dept. and yes, there's that online dating shizz but i don't think i can go that route again right now. and so what should i do? my therapist has suggested joining a bridge club. my sister says to join a group like moveon. neither totally appeals. pops says to be more flexible in what i seek. mummy no longer says much at all since she might be l'il bit scared of my sometimes defensive temper.

and meantime i got a stomach ache. oh, to have someone who'd make me chicken soup.

studio blow

i caught the end of studio 60 last night. honestly, studio 360 is like 300 times better. (now that's comedy!) anyhoo, the show had sting on it. sting—or you may know him as mr. sanctimony in an open nehru shirt in lotus position. how i long for herbal tea, he mused. it seems utterly fitting that sting was on that show cause he is the ne plus ultra of self-righteous and so is every aaron sorkin joint. it's a perfect match. and, in that way, perfectly appropriate material for this here blog's original intent.

other stuff: overheard a young woman, maybe 22 yrs old, chatting on her cellie last night. she said this, 'i think i was just trying to say 'hey' or something like that.'

hilarious.

what exactly is something like 'hey' that is not 'hey'? what are the synonyms that escaped her? was she going for 'yo' but simply could not find the word little bird?

kingdom of nuisance, pop. 3

if you don't like complaints, skip this post please and return on another day when i'll write about something else.

my upstairs neighbor, the undisputed queen of passive agressive*, just caught up with me in the hallway to say that someone must come into my apartment on tuesday to stick their head out the back window and no, not shout 'i'm mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore,' but to put cement on the back of the building with a long pole rather than using a ladder to ascend, or some such ill-conceived effort at maintenance. and so i have to move things away from the window lest they get dirty. and this can't wait until we tenants are gone? geez-us!

i didn't bother to tell the queen that i have a new place i'm moving to, cause i'm a servant in the royal court of indirect. and cause she indicated to me that apartment dealings should be with the landlady, not her, even though the landlady deputized her to be the on-site go-to person.

the nice thing that happened today is that i got an email yesterday from a writer whose book i reviewed about six years ago. and the writer said she had just reread my review and had been meaning to write me all this time to say thanks for my understanding and good review. and i wrote her to say, what a kind and decent note to write me, it made my day, which is true, and yesterday was a tough day. and then she wrote me back today to say she had googled me and that she really liked my writing and i should really write a book. isn't that nice? i think i should write a book too. but i don't quite have a topic. and fiction isn't really my thing. so if you have topics to suggest, pls do share them.

*here's the best example of my upstairs neighbor's way: once upon a time i had a very big new years party. and i put up a notice to neighbors that it was coming and they are invited. none of them came. the party was loud. it was crowded, it was late. and, for crissakes, it was new years eve. it ended, mostly around 2, with some stragglers staying on quite a bit later. and the next day i ran into her in the hall and wished her a happy new year and that i'd hoped it wasn't too loud. and she said, 'oh, well, i just went to bed at midnight and put a pillow over my head.' i don't think i replied to that cause what can you say? what would you say?

anthrax

remember that song by scott ian and his band? 'time time tickin' in my head; tickin' in my head; tickin' in my head."

when i was in college friends and i went to vermont one weekend and did what college kids do. that is smoke pot. some of the kids also took acid. i'm the kind of kid who's scared of drugs like acid and so stuck to pot. and around midnight a couple of us kids went out to one of our rental cars, turned on the radio, and turned it way up until the car shook hard.

little moments stay in your head for so long.

i dined with my great aunt last night. she wanted to go to a restaurant called gene's on 6th avenue. i told her i don't like gene's. she asked why. i said i find it depressing. she didn't press me on it but i'll tell you why, somewhat loyal reader: once i went there with my aunt and the crowd in the joint was exceedingly geriatric. that's not what depressed me. the menu was veal marsala and veal scallopine and veal capone. that didn't quite depress me either.

here's what made me want to scream: the short jackets the waiters had to wear, with fringed epaulettes, that seemed too big entirely and the uniforms seemed to date from about 1979. and they didn't say, miss or ma'am when they took my order.

they said, 'what would you like, lady?'

uniforms. lady. the all of it.

my heart apparently bleeds; i got sympathy pangs of humiliation for people who have to wear decades-old polyester. we're not on a cruise anyway. meantime, the waiters are trying to make a goddamn dime and don't want my worthless sympathy.

work let out early today but i'm still here, waiting on a phone call or two for a freelance story. and it depresses me to be in a nearly empty office with tasteless concord grapes on my messy, dusty, dirty desk having eaten a bland, stale piece of pizza for lunch.

and time is ticking in my head. ticking in my head. ticking in my head.

johnny hancocked

it's done. lease is signed. phewwwseeey!!! fixing to pour myself a big glass of celebrating.

hey you...want to join me?

the plagues

it's not bubonic, but doubt that fills me right now. tonight. this minute. this second. i'm tired but know when i get into bed i'll be pluck awake, my heart beating a tiny jog faster than its usual trot.

i'm supposed to sign a lease in the morning and i'm filled with a sense that perhaps i should not. and perhaps instead i should stay put until the end of december and then leave my job and move away to some future filled with more than the regular dose of uncertainty. and i fear that in signing the lease, i'm signing on for humdrum and old age and resignation and cowardice. i thought for a moment today i might be out of work suddenly (i've suffered a bout of the paranoids lately too) and though that scared me, it was also exhilirating. and what if i was? i've quit jobs before. never left the other way and hopefully that's not where i'm headed. but the what ifs of doom—from them i also suffer tonight.

and romance? i went on a quasi-date last night. quasimodo. a guy i had gone out with a few times before. and we had a strange communication over the summer, or mis-communication, and he was very direct and honest about my arguably wormy behavior. and he rather called me on it. that made him a little heroic. such a straight shooter, you know, those are kind of rare. the funny thing yesterday was that at one point as he was talking i thought, oh yeah, that's right...he's got issues too. sometimes i do the dumbest thing and forget that, and assume other people have it all screwed on just right, are confident, well-adjusted. and then with a glance or a gesture or a sentence, or even just a fragment of one, the truth peeks out, or i spy it anyway. such a relief to see that equality.

say a novena, or your chosen notion

to send good vibes...cause it's possible that maybe hopefully could it be that i've found a place to live...and it's smaller than where i am but sunny as the day is long. and quiet as the night is. and sweet as pie. for now. and i made an application and gave them dough to check my credit and faxed this morning other info...which appears to have met with their approval. and now i got to git me two fat certified checks cause craigslist has good stuff, but this was even better. now the ulcer seeming to form might dissipate.

ta da.

and in other news...k reports that as soon as she downloads bob seeger's night moves, our cd, 'espana, t'amo' will be ready for youse who want it. who need it. who breathe it. who live it. who love it. who check it. who get with it.

u-s-a

well, in a little bit of procrastination i turned on the telly and there's nothing much on. except on channel 9, i don't know the name of that network anymore—is it the cw? anyway, there's some really hilariously bad show on that feels like a cable access telenovela and it brings me back to when i was a boomerang kid (that is, living at home as an adult) and there was cable and late at night i'd turn on the tee-vee before hitting it, and there was, invariably, on the usa network some impossibly stupid show with big tits and big hair (usually blond) and music for making out if you happen to live in a midrange hotel elevator, and intrigue too, and it all felt like it had been once upon a time a soft porn presentation, but the porny shots were excised, so now it was simply terrible dialogue, and stilted acting, and, somehow, improbably gripping.

when a woman says to a man, 'promise me you had nothing to do with her murder?' and he replies with a meaningful look and a tender kiss on her knuckle, all you can do is drink a beer and promise yourself you'll get hbo. or at least a dvd hookup.

in other news, i got an email from a finn who i've never met but i met a friend of his. so i wrote back. but i wonder if we'll ever meet in person. that would be a kick. but i've heard there are high depression rates there and i don't know how much i need to be around that shizz. but if we moved to rome or barcelona or amsterdam, that's something i can git behind.

we coulda been neighbors...

but guess what maggie gyllenhaal and husband peter? we still can be.

check it: i'm getting kicked out up the street from where, i heard, you're moving in. and then i read, you have a garden apartment that there's no tenant in. so i propose that i be that person, that tenant, that friendly gal whose rent is no more than 1500 a month or less, cause she's so outta sight and swell and supercool. that person from whom you borrow sugar or, in my experience, a toilet plunger (i washed it off before i returned it cause, i am considerate, above all). mi casa es su casa. and i don't even speak spanish, so you know i mean it. i won't play music too loud. i won't smoke inside there—hell, i don't even smoke at all, except sometimes at parties or when i travel but those occasions are getting rarer. much. and, you can drink my beer when i have beer. you can drink my wine when that's around. when paparazzi come around wearing papagallos, i'll shoo them.

hey, think of what we have in common: movies, you make them, i see them. food, we all eat it. that's the start of a rilly rilly long list.

i'll knit your baby a sweater. i'll make you a lasagna.

please. don't make me be homeless. as my landlord said, 'that would be unchristian.' she should know cause she goes to church.

hallelujah and amen.