Who wants to take me on vacation?

the Pacific Ocean

I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's something about the light this morning that makes me kind of sad. It reminds me of the light in southern California, and there's a certain freshness to the air (that is very much unlike southern California). Maybe it's the weather, or that tomorrow will be August, or that it hasn't really felt like summer at all, really, or that even though I was so lost and confused last summer, I am so, so much more lost now.

I wish I could have gone down to Hermosa Beach this year. My uncle lives there, and as much as most of L.A. makes me feel kind of weird and uneasy, there is something to be said about a life on the beach, where the hazards to a completely idyllic life seem to be sunburn and the fact that avocados are just too damn cheap. My usual warm-fuzzies for Madison and the Midwest seem to have fluttered off somewhere. I don't know why, but I would give anything to be anywhere else right now.

Here's the product of a long time of internet creepage this afternoon

This video:

MGMT - The Youth from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

and My favorite thing on Craigslist to date.

Cultured as Fuck: Cy Twombly's Peonies

Here is one of my favorite paintings. It's part of a series on peonies that is completely fabulous and makes me like peonies even though they look like inappropriately drunk old women and are always crawling with ants. On a related note, if you find yourself in the Chicagoland area, you should go visit the Modern Wing at the Art Institute. Just do it, trust me.


The haikus of Takarai Kikaku:

AH! The Peonies
For which
Kusonoki
Took off his A(r)mour

The White Peony
at the moon
one evening
crumbled
and
fell.

From the heart
of the peony
a drunken
bee.

The Peony fell
Spilling out
yesterday's
rain.

The Peony
Quivers
Quivers.

The good kind of messy

Good friends, cheap drinks, bike rides around town, the odd questionable decision, reading, painting, discovering that holy shit, you can watch every PBS Frontline on the interweb (I just watched the one on Hugo Chavez). Things are okay. Here is a work that is very much in progress (for example, it's really, really not pink anymore):

UPDATE

7:19:52. Finished Assassination Vacation. Stretched and primed a 26"x28" canvas. Don't know what to do with it. Well, maybe I do. Haven't painted anything in a long time.

Update

5:08:47 of Assassination Vacation. Holy shit, Charles Guiteau was completely fucking insane.

It's better to hear it read in Brad Bird's crazed monotone. Brad Bird, Wikipedia tells me, is a director of computer-animated movies such as Ratatouille, a film that is weirdly quite close to my heart.

Update

Update:

4:42:53 into Assassination Vacation. The death of President James Garfield, the Republican from Ohio whose first term was cut down to a meager 199 days by a bullet from a man named Charles Guiteau, arguably creator of the first Garfield Minus Garfield. Incidentally, Garfield's voice has an odd and unmistakable hint of New Jersey Jew to it.

Going on a bike ride tonight with a disreputable gentleman (though he refers to himself as a libidinous profligate). Til then, I'm eating Rainier cherries and doing laundry. And finally stretching that goddamn canvas.

the Couchsurfer from Kalefornia

We're hosting a Couchsurfer. He looks like a cross between DFW and maybe Jesus. He's reading Infinite Jest, actually, and seems like he's got a bit of money to be funding this three-month trip across Ameriac starting in Berkley, and something about his intensity makes it clear that he is a pretty odd duck. Two nights ago, I took him to Four Star, we rented Wet Hot American Summer, a movie he mentioned he once had in absurdly heavy rotation back when he used to sell weed, and we drank a couple beers and he passed out at nine. The movie, which he claimed would "blow my mind", was alright.

Last night he made us dinner. It all started with two pounds of kale he got at the Farmers' Market and a little ingenuity or MSG or something, and it turned out like this:

lightly boiled kale and extra-firm tofu dressed in seasoned rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and something called "Bragg", a liquid amino sauce by which Couchsurfer Alex swears.

fake chicken patties (the Quorn kind, which is by far the best fake meat substitute thing out there. My understanding is that it's kind of made out of fungus.)

sauce made out of the leftover grease from the fake chicken patties, the juice of four oranges, some orange zest, and a pinch of spicy garlic sauce leftover from some Thai carryout

pardon the poor lighting quality, but I was too hungry at this point to care. Also, I do happen to like wheat beers a lot.

This is what summer is for

I so childishly wished this weekend would never end.

Things almost never go right when I bring people back to Chicago with me. I always extend an invitation to a friend or roommate because it's not that far and we are, of course, welcome to stay at my parents' house that offers the luxuries of food and cats and easy access to the Blue Line. The last few times, however, have been either dissatisfying (getting stranded in Rogers Park while intoxicated in the middle of the night), or distressing (one friend got her car windows smashed outside my folks' house), and of course, there's that one time that friend-of-a-friend was selling ecstasy out of the spare room during Lollapalooza three years ago.

But this was perfect. My two roommates and I lived like kings on burgers and guacamole and potato salad and fresh fruit, spending the long days at quite a few impressive performances and too much of the night trying to get a stupid northbound Ashland bus.

Highlights? The National was the best. No, they were amazing. I wish I could watch them like that every night of my life. It was solid, loud, perhaps Springsteeny, lush, heavy, and it was great to see someone like that Matt Berninger commit himself so intensely to the music. Guess we'll see if the audio turns out, but I'm afraid it will be peppered with some really cool conversations between me and my friend Chris from high school.

I guess I can back up here. By the time we got to Union Park on Friday, Yo La Tengo had just started, so we hovered on the periphery and spent most of their set trying to find our various friends. They seemed alright (the band, not our friends. I don't like friends), and we sort of hovered on the periphery for The Jesus Lizard, which was a set that seemed to please a lot of aging hipsters of the agier and grungier varieties. Built to Spill was pretty good, though I have to admit I was distracted by some kind of joyful orgy situation happening between two girls and a guy over to the right of us. We all were. Whatever they were on, we wanted it.

We returned around maybe 3 Saturday afternoon. The Pains of Being Pure of Heart were a little disappointing because not only do they have the dumbest name ever, but their vocals didn't live up to dense harmonies on their recordings (read: the girl maybe can't actually sing). Yeasayer was the next one we caught, which was another high point, maybe actually peaking when the intensity of their music rose in perfect unison with the onsets of rain followed by sunshine. I've never seen so many happy people in the rain. Beirut was lovely, and The National, well, really did it for me that night.

Beirut and their many, many instruments

We didn't make it back to the Park until a little after 2:30, which pissed me off because I really wanted to catch Blitzen Trapper, a band that has become a recent favorite of mine. Of course, this was the day security decided to actually search our bags, so while I contemplated quickly stuffing the whole cheesy-and-onion-roll affair into my face before entering, I decided to cut my losses and catch more of the show. I was not disappointed. Women, however, was lame. The Thermals were okay-- I thought their best was a cover of Nirvana's "Verse Chorus Verse", but the big crowd-pleaser was Green Day's "Basket Case". Come to think of it, I don't know if they played any of their own music. The Walkmen were great, M83 was quite the party, and Grizzly Bear alternated between some really excellent complex layers of sound and melody, and some really boring jam-out times.

Then the entire crowd shifted eastward toward the Aluminum Stage, and there we waited for the Flaming Lips to emerge from the go-go dancer's giant light-up vagina. Oh, it was the Flaming Lips alright, and though they're not, like, a band I listen to on a regular basis, the exuberance and general gratuitousness of the performance blew me away. There were balloons, confetti, confetti cannons, balloons filled with confetti, the famous giant hamster ball thing, dancing frogs, dancing gorillas, dancing go-go dancers, and of course, the effervescent Wayne Coyne. They weren't too bad as a band, either.

Pitchfork time!

Today I leave for Milwaukee, then down to Chicago for Pitchfork Music Festival. Bands I'm excited to see:

Friday

Yo La Tengo

The Jesus Lizard

Saturday

The National

Beirut

Yeasayer

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (sort of. Also, I can't say that to anyone  because I'm actually too embarrassed to say their stupid name)

Sunday

Grizzly Bear

The Flaming Lips

The Walkmen

The Thermals

Blitzen Trapper

Plus I'm sure there will be all kinds of fabulous surprises along the way. No, I will not be Tweeting it live. See ya, suckers!

Okay, back again.

Change of plans. I'm not really in the mood for French Existentialism today, as it turns out, and maybe I never really am. What I realized I should be doing is cleaning my room, but I first made sure to download my free audiobook as advertised at the end of the This American Life podcast (you should do it, too. It's a pretty good deal). After much debate, I settled on Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation because I have a huge boner for Sarah Vowell and her squeaky little voice and geeky demeanor. Also because it features Jon Stewart as President James A. Garfield.

From the iTunes description:

Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other, a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.

So far, it's pretty good. About 19 minutes in, I realized that I was going to need some coffee if I was going to get anything done today, so I rustled up some café au lait (I've changed my mind about everything), and went outside for some nicotine and obviously helpful list-making:

clean room

tampons
toilet paper
antiseptic mouthwash

That's as far as I got. Looking over at the White Trash Rock Garden as I absentmindedly alternated between sips of coffee and puffs of cigarette, I noticed something amongst the sad shrubs and cigarette butts and the garden gnome. It was a book, The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, dropped down for me from the upstairs neighbors' fire escape. I climbed over the railing, careful to avoid the broken glass and spider webs, and picked up the paperback. Safely back on the stoop, I flipped through the pages, skipping the introductions and prologues because I never read those, and found the first paragraph of the novel proper:

Dr. Sarvis with his bald mottled dome and savage visage, grim and noble as Sibelius, was out night-riding on a routine neighborhood beautification project, burning billboards along the highway-- U.S. 66, later to be devoured by the superstate's interstate autobahn. His procedure was simple, surgically deft. With a five-gallon can of gasoline he sloshed about the legs and support members of the selected target, then applied a match. Everyone should have a hobby.

I know I have like five books going at this point, but Christ. I'm excited for this one. It's a good day when books just fall out of the sky at me.

Happy Bastille Day!

C'est le quatorze juillet! Let us eat cake!

To celebrate, I am going to spend the day reading Simone de Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe, drinking French roast coffee, and eating leftover birthday cake. Then Liam and I are going out for a New Glarus beer tasting at an Italian restaurant, which does not fit with the theme, but whatever, he's buying.

I leave you now with the best version of La Marseillaise I could think of:

And the child born on the Sabbath day is bonnie and bright and good and gay

What's that? Two cakes! The one on the left is from my mom, the one on the right is from my roommates-- they're subtle variations on my personal cake of choice (each made in ignorance of other possible cake-related plans) , yellow cake with chocolate frosting from a can. My mom's is more fine and dense, and she used the whole can of frosting and drew pictures of cats on it, while my roommates' is very rich, crumbly, and buttery, and there are sprinkles. Um so we've got some cake to eat before we go to Milwaukee/Chicago on Thursday. . .


I haven't been this happy in quite some time. Granted, I felt pretty rough today after the two Bells Oberons I had before dinner, the champagne the bartender I work with bought us when we got to the restaurant, the wonderful Belgian white wine we had with dinner, the many beers at Brocach when my friends met up with us after dinner, the martini I drank for some inexplicable reason, then that horrible mixed drink and the shot of Patron I had with the bartender at the Plaza before swan-diving into my bed. I also had to work a full shift, which was absurdly difficult for obvious reasons.

But you know what? There's no way around this corniness of what I'm saying here, but I'm just so over the goddamn moon about what wonderful family and friends I have. I think everyone had a great time last night, and I was so happy to have the night off to hang out with them, and the small collection of gifts they gave me today made me so happy not so much for the accumulation of various material objects, but the simple fact that everybody knows me so well and cares about me enough to search out such thoughtful little items, and as I sip the last of the Prosecco I brought from work to accompany Cake Time, I can't help but get a little misty thinking about them. Aw. But no, really.

Speaking of gifts. Many were food-related. My parents (among other things) gave me two (two!) boxes of Frango Mints, Sarah (among other things) gave me a bottle of hot chile pineapple grilling sauce and a jar of mixed nuts that's all good nuts like cashews and almonds and pecans and no peanuts, and Lisa (among other things) gave me cookie cutters in the shape of a bunny, a kitty, and a squirrel, a jar of artichoke piquillo bruschetta, and a year subscription to Bon Appétit magazine!

I am a lucky duckling. Unfortunately, though, I finished the Prosecco, so now it's time for me to fall into bed and not get out of it for a long, long time. Goodnight.

P.S. I have consumed about seven thousand calories today. Jeesus.

What one sacrifices the old lifeblood for these days.

I cannot wait to get paid tomorrow. I ended up missing most of the food-related portion of our neighbors' fish fry yesterday because I went to give plasma, which sucked, because 1) it took three fucking hours 2) it hurt more than usual 3) apparently my plasma is worth five dollars less per session than it was a week ago 4) all I wanted in the world during those three hours was some deep-fried tillapia 5) I was doing it because I needed to put seven extra dollars in my bank account so that my rent check, which my landlord luckily had not yet deposited, would not bounce and subsequently bury me in overdraft fees again because I'm apparently too stupid to keep my checkbook in order.

Also, I'm signing a lease today, which is exciting. Hopefully I can take a fifteen-minute break from my shift to do that. Also, I hope the new landlord (uh, she goes by 'Jazz') will accept a postdated check.

And there's more, but it's not interesting. I thought I was going to get to stop worrying about money for like two seconds, but I guess I'm naïve. Oh bother.


P.S. the deep-fried tillapia and homemade fries were delicious, even if it was cold by the time I got there. And they still had plenty of beer left. No pictures, but I guess this fish fry business is going to become a regular thing, and I like everything about that.

Yay Muffins!

Sorry to disappoint yesterday. Guess I had other things on my mind besides food. I'll make it up to you, though. Look what I found in the kitchen when I got up this morning:

God I love when the Muffin Fairy visits. They're made with sour cream and fresh cherries and a smattering of raspberry preserves. Soo perfect and buttery and delicious. . .

Musings and Amusings

Writing a blog is kind of hard. The most difficult part, in my mind, is the constant attention one must pay to what kind of gesture one is making in posting created material in a public place. I guess that since I have never been published (I was going to, but sadly, that offer has been rescinded), I have never really had to confront the idea of writing for or to an audience, and this concern opens up a whole 'nother can of proverbial worms: appropriateness, self-censorship, general presentation of myself, etc. etc. It's kind of an annoyingly necessary evil of publication (even the softcore self-publication of a blog) that I have to consider each thing I write as a real speech-act.

For example, I just split up with my boyfriend of a year. And let me tell you (like this is some kind of news), there are all kinds of feelings happening apropos to that little life-change. But I tend to be a pretty private person. But I sometimes feel so sad, or so bitter, and I have had many sad and bitter words to say about it. But do I want to present myself to the world (or the Interwebs) in that way? Do I want to be so dramatic? How should I consider the fact that he reads this blog? Like c'mon, let's not get all LiveJournal about this.


I guess there have been a lot of life changes in recent weeks. For example, I am further giving up my isms, which means I have been not quite the strict vegetarian I used to be, nor the sort of bullshitty pescatarian I have been for the past year. Why? Oh, who knows. I'm finding it hard to care about things like that. I don't know what that says about me. I guess it comes at some kind of intersection of generalized apathy and my recent inculcation with a culture of food and cooking. I'm not quite a 'foodie' yet, but it could happen. Bring on the ridicule; I'll keep the delicious treats to myself.

In conclusion, I've spent the long, bikini-clad day off sitting in the sun with a full glass of cold Italian Blood Orange Soda and my old dog-eared paperback copy of Gone With The Wind. I haven't read it since I tore through it the summer after 6th grade, but so far, it's been amazing. It's funny, as an educated white Yankee of the Future, to read something so nostalgic for the lifestyle of the antebellum South, especially given that Margaret Miller was actually mourning an era where the privileged enjoyed their various comforts at the expense of, y'know, slaves. It's a good book, though. I'd even go so far as to say that it's better than the movie, but I have to say, I love the movie as well.

Here's the most amusing quote so far:

The more sedate and older sections of the South looked down their noses at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying one's liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered. (p. 6)

What a culture. And what men. Feminist leanings aside, who wouldn't swoon at a man who rode well, shot straight, danced lightly, and carried his liquor like a gentleman?

If you're interested, here's the New Yorker article that inspired me to watch the movie again, and embark on my current summer reading. Victor Fleming was quite the character. And the New Yorker is quite the entertaining rag.