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December 30, 2006
YouTube Socks
So by now probably everyone who's paying some attention knows or has seen the videos of young girls grinding on YouTube for attention... but have you found the girl performing for a f00t fet!sh!st? I find myself feeling some concern for the gal in the video -- she sounds awful young -- but then, that's doubtless part of the appeal, and it sounds like she's old hat at this business. All I wonder is where she found him... particularly if it was before the advent of YouTube. This suggests the outline of a story.
Posted by me at 8:53 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2006
Fries and Propaganda: Enter the vaGinger
Charlie's Kitchen, Cambridge, MA
Guest starring Shauna
g: I want a -- I was about to call it a vag!na, what's it called again? --
s: A vaGinger.
g: -- what she's having.
g: Can you make cheese fries?
waitress: Yep!
g: With cheddar?
w: Yep.
j: Can you do it with the waffle fries?
g: Wait, is that legal?
j: Oh, maybe not...
w: (weird look) I'm confused.
g: I know it seems weird. It's for Science.
w: Right, for science.
j: Also, can you get us a menu? She needs to see the menu.
g: Does it involve bacon?
j: Oh yes.
g: Does it involve double-entendres like the drink?
j: Every time I hear that I have to think "double entenuendre."
(time passes. Fries arrive.)
g: I'm seeing white cheese, here.
j: It has promising meltage and good distribution.
s: While you're talking about it it's gonna get cold!
j: It's for science!
s: Shouldn't part of the science be about the taste?
j: I amend: while the excessive salt is good, the meltage is uneven. Check out that uneven meltage. (points to unaltered cheese corner)
g: I'm not getting the salt, and the cheese is boring.
(Menu arrives. Almost everything on the page I've been presented with has bacon in it.)
g: Everything has bacon in it! Except the lobster roll. Why doesn't the lobster roll have bacon in it?
s: I'm sure it does.
j: Didn't you see the title?
g: (reads) "Bacon and More." No, I hadn't read the title.
j: Maybe that's why you only got twenty pages read today.
s: Yeah, the headers are useful.
g: I don't read the headers. All this cheese is mine. (takes a slice worth and its attendant fries)
j: She does this every time. Look at this distribution and standard deviation! (At this point, cheese covers half the fries and the other half lie naked.)
g: Get your qualitative methodologies off my cheese fries!
s: You mean quantitative methodologies.
g: Look, I've got half a vaGinger in me. That shit is really good with cheese fries!
(ed note: a vaGinger is two parts ginger ale, one part vanilla vodka, preferably Stoli. Garnish with a cherry.)
(second ed note: We ended the evening dumpster diving outside a freshly-closed Tower Records, a nationwide gig I highly recommend which will not be possible forever. A gang of teenage boys walked off with a crate of mystery CDs to be sold on eBay, while I found a price sticker gun and a hand-burned copy of William Shatner's spoken-word CD. Bakon got a stapler. There were lots of staplers. A guy who'd been hired to sell Monster Energy Drink came up asked to take a picture of us holding cans of the stuff, because he had to go out and prove he was pushing the drink on people. I put my arm around a bum who had joined in. In the picture, he gestured at his can of Monster with a sparkly-clean X-Acto knife he'd found by the dumpster. We hung out until the fuzz drove up, gave us the stink-eye, and said "Out.")
Posted by me at 11:58 PM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2006
NEEEEEAR??? FAAAAAAAAR!!!!
The author, hugging Frank Oz's Muppet-clad arm in 2004.
Am currently going back over Ulises's piece on things which are epistemologically near and far, and even though I finally understand what he means by it (even if I don't totally agree), I still can't shake Grover screaming NEEEEAAAR?! FAAAAAAAR!! when I think about it.
So it occurred to me... yes... I checked YouTube, and Grover's original sketch on NEAR and FAR is actually up there! God Bless YouTube!
The funny thing is, the original sketch also has something to do with epistemology. Nobody really remembers this, but Grover spends a lot of the sketch "checking in" with the viewer about whether they actually understand what "near" and "far" mean.
"This? *pant* This is NEAR. You must understa*pant, pant* -- you don't understan'?! RRrraaiiiugh!*sob**runs away from camera* This is-- FAAAAAAAAR!!!"
Of course, the Internets have already logged my own rendition of this sketch with Ulises's revisions.
More on epistemological nearness and farness when I manage to get something written down. Which seems unlikely, because I'm hellishly scattered. If I don't run away to Boston today I think it's quite likely I won't get the requisite things done by the end of the semester.
Posted by me at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)
December 17, 2006
Loud Party in the Endgame
The downstairs neighbors are having a loud party. I mean loud. Shake the apartment, spook the cats loud. Everything that's not heavy is rattling. Used to be that apartment would reglarly play music pretty loud, but it was never like this. I figured a bunch of latchkey kids lived there, since that was who I ever saw go in or out. This sounds like a grown-up party, and a bunch of people I haven't seen yet. Different mix of music. People have been ringing the buzzer all night, asking to be let in.
Every now and again the music stops at the very beginning of a track and I sigh and think it's over, but I think they're just stopping a song they don't like and putting on what sounds like the exact same reggaeton hit. Emily met me when I came in, and offered to call 311. I did instead; she's been working pretty hard on papers. I felt bad for calling, though, and I feel worse now. It's not like this happens every weekend with this apartment, or something.
I'm thinking about the kids who live in this neighborhood, and about the ones in Fab's old neighborhood. They face plenty of crap in their lives. They need some time to unwind, and they might as well do it on the cheap. I talked to Fab earlier today. She's out on a date tonight. And if they were at a party like this? I wouldn't want to shut it down.
Sounds like they're dancing down there, and some of the salsa they're playing is pretty good, even if it's mixed with some profoundly awful reggaeton. Everyone's singing along at the top of their lungs. If the music goes back to being decent, I might go down and demand that if they're going to keep me up they might as well invite me in. I'm not bold enough -- what would the cops think if they found the complainant at the party, and she went back upstairs when things dispersed?
I don't want to be the snotty old lady upstairs, but I am. I've worn my dumpiest clothes and slopped around until I'd missed the roomies' invite to go to a movie. I've chickened out on two dates in two days, and sat by myself playing video games instead. I'm deep, deep in an ugly rut which is anathema to everything New York. It's unlikely I can clamber out of it to do something as unorthodox as cross the gentrification line for a house party I've already reported to the cops. So much for my mother's pride in me walking through Harlem after dark. Maybe I should start slow. Tea with some nice young man.
I guess I'm in mourning since my streak of heavy socializing ended -- Thanksgiving, with two halves of the family, big conference, hookups, playing host to Lindsay. The day after she left I was bawling into my pillow. Somehow losing all those people all of a sudden helped petty dreadfuls of the semester endgame gouge deep. I get up in the morning and can barely move.
Even though I'm not going down to dance, it's not like I don't benefit from the music. My teeth are on edge and I'm developing a headache, but what can I do? Certainly can't sleep. Ope! Sorry, Mr. Fate. Couldn't get any homework done last night, the downstairs neighbors threw the party to end all parties.
The cats have fallen asleep, finally. I guess that music has opened up a space for me that I wasn't letting myself take away from the projects which are slowly wearing me down. I'm going to go put together a few more things for the blog. I just renewed the domain name, so I guess I'm going to keep it going even though it's been so inactive. I've almost been fearful of writing, like I'm worried about what will come out. Or maybe it's just lost its attraction since I've started getting published so much again. It's work.
Guess I'll have to take some aspirin to survive. This music is really getting nauseating. Ope. There's some merengue... my third-least-favorite genre of Latin music, having been displaced by bachata and reggaeton since I moved to Washington Heights.
Posted by me at 1:52 AM | Comments (0)