Monday Miscellany November 2, 2009

I’m already mourning the passing of the Season of Wearing Cute Dresses in a pretty hardcore way. Yuck. Forgive that I already posted a picture of this outfit (which I have christened “You’d Never Guess She’s a Man-Hating Anarcho-Feminist,”), but I did a lot of tailoring to it to make it fit (there was a LOT more lace) and I’m pretty much in love with it. Those tights have little twee hearts on them!

Lots happening out there in the world, plus I am over my horrid mood of last week! Let us celebrate with links:

My BFFF (extra F for how Fucking much I love him) Than Luu is doing some ridiculous food blogging on his travels around the world with his band Black Gold (Oh look! Another opportunity to mention the music video I was in, how handy!). Check it out!

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Speaking of bands, while I was engaged in a horrible Halloween depression spiral, my sweetheart was in Louisville mixing THIS. Wow.
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Profanity-laced hilarity courtesy of McSweeney’s.

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The new Bloodroot calendar is out! In the two years since Bloodroot published the gorgeous cookbook set that I was honored to have had a hand in creating, they have been publishing a calendar with new recipes. The calendar is super gorgeous and filled with 99% vegan recipes straight out of my mentor Selma’s head–snap it up!

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I’m happy one of the Brooklyn Jonathans (Safran Foer, Ames, and Letham) wrote a book about why you should be vegan or whatevs, and I’m happy that famous blonde actresses are writing vegan cookbooks, all of that is well and good. But these books are written for non-vegans—why people have to keep pointing them out to me I have no idea.

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Speaking of another of the Bklyn Jonathans, Ames wrote that new show Bored to Death and though I haven’t seen it I completely loved & agreed with Nancy Franklin’s recent New Yorker review (I basically agree with everything Nancy Franklin has ever said though.). Particularly this part:

Chick lit—the range of fiction by women about contemporary city life, friendships, sex, jobs, climbing out of the wreckage of youthful dreams—gets a lot less respect than the male equivalent, which people tend to approach as if it were automatically more artful, more written. Women write “thinly veiled accounts”; men write “romans à clef.” Women writers may have a room of their own, but men who thrash around in front of the mirror and record their every failure, humiliation, moue, and excretion for an audience’s consumption still own the house, even if all they do in it is lie on the couch—and then write about it.
The work of Jonathan Ames, who created the new HBO series “Bored to Death,” lies in this vein of self-fascination and self-conscious inertia.

My god, YES. I suffered through a Jonathan Ames audiobook (which I refuse to Google to figure out the title, as I am unwilling to spend one more second of my life on Jonathan Ames) once, and every second was pure torture.

On the other hand, everyone says this new series is good. Oh, the pain.

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And a few work-related miscellanies:

Heya Baltimorites (?)! Check out Brunie’s Bakery, a cute small-batch vegan bakery in your fair city. Recently their head baker emailed me to say that she was making the wedding cake for the woman who ordered the aforementioned wedding truffles from last week and she just sampled and adored a few truffles. How nice is that? I love it when things like that happen. Vegans can be a crazy bunch, but overall we are such decent, sweet, friendly people, no?

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(All that follows is NSFW!)

So, this erotic chocolate shop in Belgium wants to sell ye olde vulvaz, and I hope we can make it happen. How hilarious does it look? My favorite product so far is the “Candy Gay String.” And while I find these deeply, deeply horrifying….I must say they are pretty well done! And they remind me all over again to be annoyed that no one (Beloved TCHO! Are you listening?) makes high-quality vegan (coco milk!!!) milk chocolate and white chocolate. Oh, and I have this mold! I once made it for my sweetheart filled with peppermint patty filling and presented it to him right before he left on a tour. It was too much sugar (a solid inch or so of peppermint patty filling, I’m not sure quite what I was thinking) and he couldn’t eat it in front of anyone and I fear a lot of it went to waste. But it was adorable!

randoms: my grandma’s racist, my boyfriend’s cute, I have a disease, but don’t worry, my hair is still great May 23, 2009

1) My grandmother (my dad’s mom) is one of those deeply racist people whose racism is so casual and built-in that it’s pretty much impossible to eradicate. She is of a generation that we just need to wait out, if you know what I mean. I think I’ve mentioned before how it took her a decade or three to stop referring to my mother as “your mother, the Jew.” I love my grandma, to the extent that she loves me. And I know that with this love comes a legacy of racism I will never entirely overcome. I think about it a lot, and try really hard to be aware of it. Cut to last week, and me mowing the lawn in intense heat and struggling with what I’ve now figured out is Lyme Disease (see #3).  Completely unbidden, I remembered what my grandmother used to say about being out in that kind of heat:

“I’m sweatin’ like a n—– on the auction block!”

Yep.

So when this thought came to me today, I tried to break it down. Was I remembering her saying that, or was I actually thinking it myself? I know that being tortured by thoughts like these is major conservative fodder for making fun of softie liberals, but the realization that I couldn’t decide what was happening in my own brain tortured me pretty much all day. There’s some pomo shit for you right there, right? What say you, Barthes? Lacan? Mons. Foucault? Do we ever think anything ourselves, or do we merely aggregate? What are thoughts, and how can the transitory nature of language ever truly convey them?

Anyway! In a racial/sexual politics of meat kind of twist, I very clearly remember that my grandmother’s other go-to “it’s hot” phrase was “I’m sweatin’ like a stuck pig!” Of course.

Do pigs even sweat?

2) On an unrelated note, while I was sweating my guts out and hoping to leach out whatever infection has taken over my body, my sweetheart was somewhere in California simultaneously needing a haircut and visiting the world’s largest tree, which looks, if you ask me, suspiciously small.

Look at that hippie!

Per this discussion, it seems appropriate for me to call him my “boyfriend” in the context of mentioning his cuteness, doesn’t it?

Per nothing in particular, last week Brittany got me drunk at the Planned Parenthood Mid-Hudson Valley 75th Anniversary Gala (it was a great night! I wore the heels she likes! Feet still hurt!). I went home and woozily Facebooked, and I can’t really explain what I said on a girlfriend’s page to provoke this response, but it made me laugh so hard the next day I cried:

Oy Lagusta. I am making sure that I get you drunk next time I am up New Paltz way. Goodness. Can’t say that I ever remember examining Jacob’s waist, but I’ll take your word for it that it is perfection itself.

And I love the lost in translation “noodle is keeping running into me.” Hope this morning isn’t bashing you over the head too terribly…

In my defense, Noodle is my little fluffy white cat, and she can bump into one in a most persistent (and, if drunk, painful) way.

3) In other why-am-I-sharing-this-with-the-internet news, apparently I have Lyme Disease, it’s awesome. If you love being exhausted all the time, that is. Are you friends with any conspiracy theorists? Take my advice and don’t ever talk to them about Lyme Disease. I didn’t know it was a magnet for conspiracy theories until this week, and listening to all the grandiose ideas about it people have foisted on me recently has made me slightly insane. I’m kicking it via the allopathic route mixed with the naturopathic: antibiotics + probiotics. I’m opening up the antibiotics and mixing them with soy yogurt, because the pills are too giant to swallow. Add kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, mix, repeat. Gurgle gurgle gurgle.

I actually think the whole thing is just a payback for telling the internet I never get tired. I’ve slept more in the past week than I have in years.

In other karmic news, immediately after I basically said people with bluetoofs should get cancer, I was pretty much forced to buy a Bluetooth. In my defense, I swear to you, universe, I will never wear it out in public. I can’t even wear it in front of Veronica at the kitchen. It’s that dorky. And also, I appear to have lost it. It’s too small!

4) Despite these obstacles, I have transitioned the Marie/Amy into something those sweet lovely Watson Twins might wear in a Jenny Lewis video—half up nice and high, half down. (PS: The Watsons have a blog! Go read it! Go hear their shivery-amazing voices live!)

It’s very hard to convey hair height in a self-taken photo, have you ever noticed that?

(Man oh man, how many links to my own blog can I put in one post? Hello navel! Why yes, I do like to gaze at you! I was restraining myself not to bring up the pill-swallowing debacle again!)

monday miscellany: wet like a cherry/from a bloodbath of birth May 11, 2009

If you ever see a yellow spoonula (yeah, I said it) like that little lady up there, buy like 20. It will be your kitchen BFF forever. Yellow spoonulas of the world unite!

Black garlic—a fermented food I’d never heard of! I’m planning on buying some then trying to make it myself. I’m sure it’s bursting with multi-layered savory flavors. Woooo-umami!

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Gays! Wanna get married, against my advice and that of other commenters on this very blog? Go to Connecticut to do it all legal and shit, and have your ceremony at Bloodroot! I just made this page for them advertising the beautiful wedding you could have at the 32-year-old restaurant, complete with a “licensed lesbian Justice of the Peace.” A licensed lesbian! It’s not every day that you see such a thing.

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Jay Blotcher’s piece on the perfectly strange couple who run Jolly’s Good Grub in Saugerstock (or whatever that place between Woodstock and Saugerties is) in the new Edible Hudson Valley (that link is just to the table of contents, the article isn’t online) was just so Hudson Valley awesome. They are a couple married as a man and a woman, but who now live as two women. It all seems very complicated and post-revolutionary and I-reject-my-birth-certificate-y and it just warms my heart.

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Snapping asparagus spears: Just one more thing your mama lied about (or, in my case: had no idea about in the first place). Harold McGee debunks the myth that it’s the right way to treat everyone’s favorite phallic vegetable (sorry, salisfy).

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I’ve never heard of this band Cornelius, but Jacob just informed me that he saw one of their shows in Japan and it blew his mind so intensely that he pretty much died, and that the graphics show thingie thing behind the band was off the hook too, and that they have a girl drummer (my special weakness), so I’ve been YouTubing them and sort of dying a little myself. Time to go to Japan again perhaps! They are a wee touch too proggy/math rocky for me to totally die, but good to watch while chopping asparagus, for sure. They remind me a touch of my sweet sweet sweet loves The Faint, especially the amazing lightshow.

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Peeps be blogging about their love for the lusciousness!

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Sorry babymamas, but oh boy, this sums up what I so often feel about The Pregnants. The two coolass girls who make up Garfunkel and Oates, Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, are my new go-to YouTube faves. One part Flight of the Conchords, 1/2 part Riot Grrl and eighty thousand parts cute as shit = YUMS.

Oh, speaking of The Pregnants, my friend Liz, who is not a Smug Pregnant at all, is about to have a baby any second. What’s up with that baby, Liz? Pop it on out and let me bring you some post-preggo whisky!

And!! Late-breaking news! I JUST found out that one of my very closest girlfriends is pregnant, and if there is anyone who would appreciate the above clip without being offended by it, it’s her. I totally cried in happiness for her when she told me she was poppin’ out kid #2. Feministy pregnancy issues are her life’s work, so it’s more than awesome for her to be pregnant again. When I called her up (two seconds after getting a long email that ended all stupid-casual with the throwaway closer “Oh, did I mention that I’m pregnant again?”), we had a great conversation about a Facebook “discussion” she is having because someone posted an abortion “joke” (it involved calling aborted fetuses “children”) that wasn’t funny and she responded.

One of the points she made in the argument was “Aborted fetuses are not children. They are medical waste. Or donatable tissue samples. Ask anyone who works at any abortion clinic. We know the facts.” Her telling it like it is made me love her harder than I ever have before, though when I declared my intention (via a Facebook status update, of course) to get t-shirts made up that said “aborted fetuses are medical waste” she very wisely pointed out that “I think out of context it might get misinterpreted. Like, abortion is wasteful—which it’s not. It’s a great way to conserve resources.”

God damn, I fucking love my friends.

in which we change and grow, and all that shit. May 6, 2009

Hilariously and tragically, I had this post written before the one below. Ah, instant karma. Or, “isn’t it ironic.” Or something that’s been in a popular song, I’m sure.

I present to you: two stories of calming the fuck down and allowing the universe to make us better.

Or something like that.

ONE

Two years ago, my tour-managin’ sweetheart Jacob opened a case containing a pedal board* to find that one pedal was missing. He had just flown from somewhere to somewhere else, and since he didn’t notice that the pedal was missing at the show, and since the case had one of those TSA fliers inside saying that the Transportation Security Administration had rifled through it and read whatever diaries were inside or whatever, he figured an underpaid guitar shredder TSA drone had pocketed the pedal. Annoying, but life goes on.

Two weeks ago, one of the stagehands handed Jacob a package that had been thrown up on stage. He unwrapped it to find the pedal and a note:

[Pause for "awww."]

My god, my toes just curl with pleasure at the whole thing. Do you know what this story means? Someone in this wretched old world got better. Someone went to a show and got drunk and stole a pedal, but two years later decided they didn’t want to be a pedal stealing kind of person, so they made it all better. Wow. Wow! We change and grow. How wonderful.

Thinking about this story, I figured: if drunks can be all good and shit, so can I.

TWO

On the welcome sheet I give to my new clients, I have all kinds of information about the service, including this little gem:

Included with each delivery is a menu sheet that lists how to heat the meals, ingredients, and tidbits we’re excited about. The menu sheet does not list microwave cooking instructions, because although we know it is sometimes necessary to use a microwave, we aren’t crazy about the idea of gamma rays exciting our organic molecules. If you do need to use a microwave, remember to add water if the dish looks dry, and to stir to ensure that it heats evenly. (Actually, those are good tips to remember when heating on the stovetop, too.)

“Gamma rays exciting our organic molecules”! I liked it. Six years ago I did 2 seconds of internet research before determining that I was accurately representing the science behind microwaves, and the line has been there since.

One of my clients recently emailed me about it. Let me paraphrase the conversation:

Client: Yo, you sound mad ridic with that microwaves “gamma rays exciting molecules” shit. Thing is, microwaves aren’t dangerous. [Insert fancy scientific talk, charts, links and graphs here which I can provide to any interested parties.] You talk all this fancy talk about nutrients and shizz, but when you don’t know your eighth grade science, it’s hard to take you seriously. Like, me and my husband, we’re like, super cautious about stuff to the point where we don’t even own cell phones even though my husband rides his bike everywhere and could get hit by a car at any minute and vitally need a cell phone, but better safe than sorry, you know? But we use microwaves, because: teh convenience. So, um, just FYI, we excite your organic molecules all over the place, and it’s always been fine. ‘Cause “excite” isn’t what it does.**

Me: WTF yo. Better safe than sorry, you know? Here’s my thing: microwaves don’t make your food good. Done. Argument over. I do feel deep in my bones (which is where all scientific theories are best tested, right?) that I want to stay away from microwaves, but also: I just can’t believe that luscious food can be microwaved food. [I didn't say any of this to my client. I just thanked her for the info and moved right along. I am a stone cold professional, yo.] And? I always use my hands-free device when using my cell phone, so I’m, like, totes ahead of the game, no?

Client: Actually:

You’d think that a hands-free setup would protect you from a cell-phone’s microwaves — at least I thought so until I read the Wikipedia entry on possible cell phone hazards.  It’s at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health and has a lot of very good information.  It seems that although wireless headsets (i.e. Bluetooth [editor's note: YOU MEAN BLUETOOTH DOUCHERS AREN'T GETTING CANCER AND DYING? DANG]) do indeed protect you, ironically some evidence suggests that wired hands-free setups do not.  Apparently the wires act as an antenna.  The electromagnetic wave travels up the outside surface of the wire, where it’s brought directly to your head!

Fortunately, it seems that you can prevent this by putting a magnetic ring called a ferrite bead around the wire.  I know this sounds bogus, but it’s quite legit — ferrite beads are commonly used in electronics for just this purpose: to prevent electromagnetic waves from propagating along the outside surfaces of wires, which causes electronic interference.  I’m looking at one right now — it’s built into the AC power supply wire for my laptop, for electronic noise suppression.  Here’s an article about using them with cell phones.

I hope these references are interesting and/or useful.

Hmm.

For some reason when my clients email me things I’m sort of predisposed to resist whatever it is they are telling me. Partially this is because sometimes it’s things like “So I read this article in Teen People about olive oil and how it will kill you and just FYI I can never eat olive oil again. Hope that won’t be a problem.”*** But probably it’s just because a client email is usually some sort of work for me to do, and like everyone else, I don’t want to do any more work than I’m already doing.

But! Instead of resisting the info as yet another set of things I had to do (change the welcome sheet, buy a ferrite bead, worry about getting cancer, be annoyed about not being able to be smug about not using microwaves and always using my hands-free thingie) and getting grumpy because there are twenty thousand things I want to do before I do the research to revise my feelings on microwaves, I just allowed the good vibes my client was trying to pass along pass into my body like, uh, an electromagnetic wave.

Knowledge is power, let’s make it better, whatever whatever. I’ll do it. I’ll learn and grow. I’ll take people’s good intentions to heart, and will listen to and learn from them. I won’t get a hideous microwave, mos def not, but I might not sneer the next time someone mentions using one. That’s progress, right?

Incrementally, with two steps backward and one step forward, I’m becoming a better person, dammit.

(Tangentially, I am also becoming someone who wears ribbon bows in her hair. Tune in tomorrow for the full report!)

**A pedal board is an, um, board on which guitar effects pedals are affixed. At least, that’s how I understand it. It usually stands near the guitarist at the front of the stage so they can step on any pedal at any time.

**Why am I slandering my client as a crazy talker? She is actually very smart and a nice person too. She is crazy to the millionth power as well, but all my clients are. And yes, I know this is probably a reflection of myself, and I’m cool with it.

***In fairness, I don’t really get emails like this anymore, because most of my clients are good-crazy these days instead of crazy-crazy, like they used to be. I don’t know why or how the balance shifted, but it did, and it’s great.

Bluestocking Bonbons at the Go Green Expo this weekend! And and and. April 15, 2009

Some quick notes:

If you’re heading to the Go Green Expo in NYC this weekend, be sure to stop by Sarah & Megan’s Treeo Design booth, where they will be repping the new bonbons as well as their amazing recycled paper wrapping papers, boxes, and biodegradable ribbon.

Also: Than pointed out to me that Karen O (SWOON!!) wore blue stockings on Letterman last night—blue stockings are taking over!

Orlande, will you be mad if I post a link to your Bluestocking Bonbons awesomeness here? ‘Cause it SO made my day. I’m not sure if people can see it if they aren’t Facebookerz, but let’s see.

And can you believe I got another email from this lady? Just one snippet:

This is an opportunity  for you to have your product placed in the hands of some of
the most  influential celebrity mothers and their  children.!
We are nearing our deadline for  this opportunity so please reply  at your earliest convenience if this is  of interest!
Celebrity mothers remain a hot  media topic, so we  will be creating specialty
gift boxes for some of  Hollywood’s most talked about moms. Join us in acknowledging these
“working  mothers” [WTF WITH THE QUOTES?] with gifts for both them and their kids.

We will use our  direct access to top talent and our reputation for pampering the world’s  biggest trendsetters
to introduce the most fabulous of products to these  stars (and their families)
Celebrity  product placement is a  tried and true method of differentiating your product from  the
masses….
Please note that we have selected  celebrity moms who have children under the age of one;
your gift should  either be appropriate for a child this age or for a mother of any  age.

Shipping deadline:  April 27, 2009
(All products will  be packaged and delivered the week of May 4th, just in time for Mother’s Day  on May 10th)
Quantity:  30 (includes 5 Press  Samples)
Inclusion Fee: $1,500

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy fuck, this turns my stomach.

Back to work!

in other extremely dorky news…. February 26, 2009

Since this is shaping up to be a ridiculously dorky week in which I talk about nothing interesting or political, can I just share this absolutely useless little nugget with you?

If you go to an M. Ward show and hear a PSA before the show about how if you take flash camera pictures your camera will be taken away, you will be listening to the dulcet tones of ME!

Continuing the series of useless stupidity: tomorrow I’ll post pictures of my new jeans! They are RIDICULOUSLY awesome—and organic cotton!!

plans and reveries video up, yo! February 24, 2009

I completely forgot to point out that the aforementioned video in which I

1) Wear makeup for the second time in my life

2) Wear horrifyingly uncomfortable heels for too many hours to count

3) Spend the day surrounded by slightly terrifying LA types who do their best to live up to their stereotypes (leggings and Uggs, leggings and Uggs)

4) Have a life-changing epiphany about my need to wear drop waist dresses

all in the service of making a two-second cameo in a friend’s band’s music video is now online!

You can see me looking catty at all the 1920s hos at around 1:58, and Jacob (also wrangled into service as an extra though, as the band manager, he was technically the boss of the whole operation) shortly thereafter.

My friend Than (drummer) STILL has that ridiculous mustache, I can’t believe it.*

Oh what the hell, I’ll just embed it here too:

*Speaking of Than, this blog post of his reminds me all over again why he (skirt-chasing drum-obsessed valley boy) and I (quasi-lesbian ultra-political intellectual) are BFFs—a shared love of sloppy Tex-Mex (or, in this case, New Mexico Mex)!

transfiguration #1 [second person] February 24, 2009

So you go to visit.

i’ve got something to say / it’s kinda gay… February 10, 2009

Um. I am now completely addicted to watching all videos by the cute and hilarious BearSlut, who made the aforementioned Rebel Grrl tribute. I just about died when I found THIS!!! I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my crazy affection for Gravy Train!!! either, but oh, thank you BearSlut, for giving me the opportunity to now do so.

that girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood / I’ve got news for you: SHE IS! February 10, 2009

WOW. I could watch Peaches videos all day long. I even love the wrong Peaches!

My favorite has to be this one.

And do you know about the Avril/Peaches thing? It’s fascinating!

I have to say though, I love that Avril “boyfriend” song. Oh, and have I told the story about the first time I heard Avril? Oh, yep, I did.

AHH, WAIT!! I HAVE FOUND THE VERY BEST VIDEO ON THE WHOLE INTERNET! Oh blog, I have never told you that I have a secret love for bears (specifically the gay kind, but I also like the wild animal kind). Combine that with my decades-long crush on Kathleen Hanna, and here we go: prepare to die of awesomeness, a bear tribute to Rebel Grrl!!

Feeling much better!