Yearly Archives: 2007

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More mailbox

What is the point of having dental insurance if it doesn’t even cover having your teeth cleaned? I showed up early for my appointment, I was perfectly friendly to the hygienist, I didn’t steal anything, I provided an insurance card, and I still got a bill in the mail for a billion dollars. I probably have the kind of medical insurance that doesn’t cover being sick either.

The kids will be home from Georgia soon! I dressed up.

I need to call Christos, Keith, Tom, Duane, Jessie, Sena, Selvi, and Santa Claus. It would be so much easier if everyone would just communicate with me through the comments section of my blog like normal people.

Thanksgiving Avenger

I should have followed the man with the dead deer in the bed of his pick-up truck on Thanksgiving morning. I should have seen what became of the body. I was behind him at the stoplight near Fashion Square Mall, but he turned right and I went straight. We were both heading toward the country. Did he shoot the deer in the city and then drive it out to Earlysville to dump it? Had he killed it in the country but then driven it around town for a few hours in order to show it off? I don’t think people should be allowed to transport deer carcasses in their cars like that, especially on holidays. ESPECIALLY near Sbarro’s, Dip-n-Dots, and Chick-Fil-A.

The family doctor came to Thanksgiving. When my grandmothers heard that he had arrived, they propped their feet up on the coffee table so he would see that they were following orders. The doctor’s four-year-old son ran onto the pool cover like it was a trampoline. At the time I was chasing him with a lacrosse ball that had been slimed by a pit bull. The boy sunk down to the water level but didn’t get wet. I held him in my arms like he was my own son who had survived. Then I quickly distracted him from the near-death experience. “My grandmother has a toilet beside her bed. Do you want to see it?” “Yes,” he said.

Percocet the cat disappeared when the Thanksgiving dogs arrived. My sister found her crouched in the upstairs heating vent. My sister shot more clay pigeons than my brother from the mountains. He bought Jager Bombs for all his city cousins but forgot to pay his bar tab.

My Georgia grandmother thought my petite Virginia cousin was a midget. “I love little people,” she said.

Did you know that Budweiser makes a beer flavored like shrimp cocktail sauce? Neither did I.

My brothers’ girlfriends from oldest to youngest: a) baked chocolate pecan pie for my mom; b) baked peanut butter cookies for my mom; c) danced with the Rockettes in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I think I found the source of my family’s sweet tooth. My mother’s Coca-Cola consumption was not regulated when she was a child. Five bottles a day back in Georgia, then one ultimate bottle after she brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.

I think I found the source of my family’s alcohol consumption. Beer is delicious and it feels good in our bellies. Except when the beer contains clam juice. I will also leave the bourbon & beef stock drinking to Nick Murray.

Did you know that J.C. Penney’s opened at 4 a.m. on Friday? Refrigerator jelly time!

I watched a documentary today about the 1993 child murders in West Memphis, Arkansas. The documentary (Paradise Lost) moved too slowly for me (I wanted to see what happened in the end), so I paused the movie and got on the internet to read about the case. The most recent appeal on behalf of the Memphis 3 defendants was filed just last month. There have been forensic breakthroughs since 1993 that suggest one of the parents actually killed the children as opposed to the three teenagers given life sentences for the crime. After reading about this theory, I had to watch the documentary over again to see if the father looked guilty. He did! I don’t know why I have never been summoned for jury duty. Anyway this has nothing to do with Thanksgiving; it’s just a random Netflix queue decision I made months ago and forgot about.

I’ve also watched a few too many Sex & the City episodes today. What’s up with Samantha? Before today I’d never watched back to back episodes of that show and now I think I hate it. Clothes, edgy vagina jokes, clothes, gay best friends, oral sex, clothes, blah.

Turkey+mashed potatoes+gravy+beer+a certain someone’s lactose intolerance=a long weekend of holiday farts. Good thing I love farts so much. Thank you, big city house guests, for passing your gas in my direction.

Inauguration of “the mailbox”

Because I don’t get out of the house much, the most exciting part of my afternoon is often the arrival of Scott the Handsome and Friendly Mailman with my daily supply of bills and coupons. Last week I received a mailing from Giant that I am particularly fired up about. It’s a letter from Victor Dudko, my local Giant Store Manager, in which he recognizes me as a “Top Banana.” Not only am I “one of Giant’s best customers,” I am also a “friend.” As a special thank you from Giant for being a Top Banana, I get a coupon for free truffles. Thanks Dudko!

The mailing also includes three “Top Pick” certificates that I am meant to cut out and present to grocery store associates who have made my shopping experience more enjoyable. Dudko says that he knows his employees will “appreciate [my] taking the time to acknowledge them.” If I’ve learned anything from my experiences in retail, I have learned that my local Giant cashiers and produce stockers are not going to appreciate my interrupting their work in order to hand them a picture of a smiling banana that has no monetary value. They are not in grade school collecting gold stars. Is the employee with the most bananas going to earn a free Personal Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut? Is the person with the most bananas going to be the envy of all his coworkers? Is the person with the most bananas going to have more money to buy real bananas? No. Is this all part of my rationalization for keeping the Top Pick certificates on my fridge door, reminding me of my own outstanding service? Maybe.

Holiday Party with an Emphasis on Christmas

The time has come to plan my (and that other guy’s) holiday party! I have a few preliminary ideas for entertainment:

1) Famous local musicians will lead my guests in a Christmas carol sing-a-long. I will pay them in merriment.

2) The two principals of the Charlottesville Womens’ Arm Wrestling League will give a pre-season exhibition.

3) We will paint cookies with dyed confectioner’s sugar that will not be tainted with lead.

4) Someone will dress up like Santa Claus and promise your children expensive gifts.

I need to choose a date. Saturday night the 15th of December? Thoughts?

PS The Christmas tree is dead and won’t be accepting presents this year, but I will.

This amuses me so much

And reminds me of my little sister somehow. Is that you Margaret?

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More pictures.

The Satellite Ballroom’s Robot Wares & Record Fair

I am thrilled to announce the return of the Satellite Ballroom’s most outstanding event of the year (after, of course, last week’s Slightly Stoopid show):

THE ROBOT WARES & RECORD FAIR!

For those of you with superior taste who have lived in Charlottesville for a couple years, you may remember this as THE shopping and music event of the holiday season. Last year I bought homemade manatee stationary while listening to Sarah White and drinking mimosas. Patrick Critzer sold curry, Thomas Dean sold silk-screened t-shirts, Junkyardoll sold vintage clothes, and a good time was had by all. I hope that everyone comes out to the Satellite Ballroom this year to support Charlottesville’s best vendors, craftspersons, and artists. I swear to blog that you will end up finding some kickass Christmas presents there.

The fair is on the afternoon of December 2nd. Let me know if you want to help organize or publicize the event, or if you need information on how to reserve your own table and make tons of cash money.

Dorking out

I haven’t been up to much these days. Dorking out, mostly. Staying in. Chronic fatigue syndrome. Hot chocolate. My grandmother is still ailing. She has renamed my family’s cat “Percocet.” Last night Darren and I watched the first episode of The Wire, which I couldn’t help but compare to Monk, a USA show we watched last week, also for the first time. The Wire is a “gritty” HBO drama about multi-ethnic, hard-boiled homicide and narcotics detectives in Baltimore, Maryland, where it seems that everyone either smokes crack or owns a loaded gun. The second is a cute show about a lily white obsessive compulsive detective who solves murders by being a charming idiot-savant. I want something in between these two shows. For instance, a jaded Mexican cop has to break up a heroin ring at the high rise Lifesaver Towers in Candy Land. Or a child detective who can’t stop wetting his pants has to kill a couple guys in Queens.

Gag

Lydia Hearst is an artist.

“I sit down and I write what I’m thinking and what I feel—it happens all at once, I never stop writing. Probably when I go home tonight, I’m going to open my computer and just start typing… I always envision myself being a Hemingway type—sitting in a dark corner with my glass of, I guess it would be, my glass of tequila and lime juice– that’s how I do it.”

Recently, she’s been hanging out with a group of young people who call themselves “the 2.0.” They include a giddy gaggle of creative aspirants such as photographer Nadav Benjamin and musician and nude Internet dude Cisco Adler, whom she has dated.

“I would say my closest friends are probably the 2.0,” she said. “It’s not about a clique, it’s just about a group of people coming together and it’s a lifestyle—it’s a bond. … So many young people are wrapped up in the party scene. The great thing about everyone in this group is, we all have real jobs, we get up in the morning. We work and that’s what brought us together…We are hardly ever apart. It’s all artists—everyone in that group is successful in their own right, whether it is music, fashion, art, photography, business. We don’t want to compare ourselves to the Factory, because you can’t have the Factory without Andy Warhol, but essentially it is like a new wave and it’s a new style of living, and we are all just riding the wave, we are all being inspirational to each other and we are helping each other out and we are always there for each other, and we are hardly ever separated for more than a day—each one of us has the same mentality, which is breaking free of the mold that is the stereotype of society and the way that we are expected to be.”

Last month, the 2.0 gang went out and all got tattoos of a skeleton key; Lydia’s is on her inner right forearm. “The symbolism behind the skeleton key is that it opens every door and it’s bonded us together,” she said.

Today I am going writing out in Earlysville with my friend Selvi. Together we form an artistic movement called Future Warehouse. Yesterday we got matching tattoos on the back of our writing hands – the Chinese character that means “We’re better than you, so there.” We have a lot of ground to cover today, not only with our short stories but also with our mission statement and our indie theme song. My mom knows about the Future Warehouse movement, currently based in her pool house, and hopefully this afternoon she will bring us some tea and more money to fund our creative operations.

I can has LOLcat Wasteland

An excerpt from “LOLcat Wasteland” by Corprew Reed, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”:

1. IM IN UR WASTELAND BURYING UR DEAD

april hates u, makes lilacs, u no can has. (1)
april in ur memoriez, making ur desire.
spring rain in ur dull rootzes.

earth in ur winter, covered in snow
can has potato. PO-TA-TO.
INVISIBLE SUMMER! RAININGZES!
im in ur hofgarden, drinking ur coffeez.

at archduke’s haus, invisible sled!
im in ur moutainz, holding on tight.
no can has cheezburger.
oral sex metaphors in ur poem.

in ur stones, whar r treez? (19)
whar r bushez?
ceiling cat cannot say.
im in redrock, hiding from sunz.
commin ze redrock.
im in ur handfull of dust,
showing ur fear.
redrock, redrock.

whar r wind?
INVISIBLE IRISH GIRL
in ur homelandz, freshening ur windz

can has hyacinths,
no can has tongue.
Isolde u down teh rivers.
Sosotris Cat has smartz, (43)
can see bukkit,
dead sailorz in bukkit,
hooked on fonicians.
belladonna in ur rocks,
situating ur situations.
man has three staves,
turning wheelz,
INVISIBLE CARD.
Sosotris Cat no can has hanged man:
avoid bukkit or u drownz.

Leander Wapshot’s letter to Moses Wapshot

Leander Wapshot, one of the great characters in John Cheever’s Wapshot Chronicle, is the slightly neurotic patriarch of an old New England family. To keep him out of adulterous mischief, his cousin Honora lets him captain her boat, the Topaze, and ferry passengers down the river to the local fairgrounds. He loves his job. “‘Tie me to the mast, Perimedes,’ Leander used to shout when he heard the merry-go-round.”

But one stormy day he crashes his ferry on the rocks and it sinks “to the bottom of the sea.” He writes to his son Moses (in his unique style) for the money to repair his vessel:

“Topaze gone, how will I fare? Geezer as old as me begins to cherish his time on this earth but with Topaze gone days pass without purpose, meaning, color, form, appetite, glory, squalor, regret, desire, pleasure or pain. Dusk. Dawn. All the same. Feel hopeful sometimes in early morning but soon discouraged. Sole excitement is to listen to horse races on radio. If I had a stake could quickly recoup price to repair Topaze. Lack even small sum for respectable bet.

“Was generous giver myself. On several occasions gave large sums to needy strangers. One-hundred-dollar bill to cab starter at Parker House. Fifty dollars to old lady selling lavender at Park Street Church. Eighty dollars to stranger in restaurant who claimed son needed operation. Other donations forgotten. Cast bread upon waters, so to speak. No refund as of today. Tasteless to remind you but never spared the horses with family. Extra suit of sail for Tern. Three hundred dollars for dahlia bulbs. English shoes, mushrooms, hothouse posies, boat club dues and groaning board consumed much of windward anchor.

“Try to help old father if within means. If not, feel out acquaintances. There is one easy spender in every group of men. Sometimes gambler. Topaze good investment. Has shown substantial profit for every season, but one. Grand business expected in Nangasakit this year. Good chance of returning loan by August. Regret handkerchief tone of letter. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone.”

Leander’s wife Sarah is able to secure a loan from the same bank that turned down Leander, and with the money she converts the Topaze into “The Only Floating Gift Shoppe in New England,” breaking her husband’s nautical heart.