Then Little Bitch told me about this trip to Cuba that he and his friends are taking in May. CUBA! You have to get there by flying from Canada first! Cool! I could put to use the Spanish I speak like a 5 year old!

Then Mikala decided to do a couple of months volunteering teaching English in Thailand and wanted to spend the last 3 weeks travelling, going to Ankor Wat and stuff like that. She wanted a travelling companion and Allie doesn’t want her to go alone. COOL, THAILAND!

So, which do I pick? It was a tough decision, but I decided on Thailand. Then Lil Bitch’s friends all bailed on the Cuba trip, that’s OK, whatever. Now Mikala has heard from another place in Thailand where she wanted to volunteer to clean up beaches or something. Now she wants to spend the last 3 weeks volunteering, and isn’t sure if she wants to travel anymore.

The Big Country thing I wanted to go to in England is Feb 11th, although it doesn’t look like there are still tickets available for that show. I’d like to go to the one in Dunfermline (hometown of Stuart Adamson & Bruce Watson as well as the Skids), but that one’s even closer, on Feb 7th. Of course, when I was planning this, back in November, the round trip tickets to London were about $250. Now they’re in the $700 range.

So, it looks like I’m not going anywhere this year, unless I can think of somewhere else and get off my butt to plan it. I’d really like to go to Peru. Will this be the year? I’ve been wanting to go there for decades! Hmmm. I’ve been looking at field schools around the world, too…

I bought tickets for Lil Bitch and I to go see Mission of Burma at the Brighton Music Hall months ago. I was positive it would sell out. I mean, who would miss up a chance to see MoB in an awesome tiny venue like the former Harper’s Ferry? Apparently lots of people because it didn’t sell out. But anyway… It had snowed the night before, so Lil Bitch came up in the afternoon to hang out so he wouldn’t have to drive in the snow at night. Or something. He brought burritos and tequila as well as a bottle of what he thought was Margarita mix, but actually had tequila already in it. After mixing it with tequila it was pretty strong, to say the least. I had had the lovely norovirus all week and so I didn’t drink so much. At some point Lil Bitch and Dee got the idea that they wanted to go to Deep Ellum (a local bar) and get some hot cocktails. So, we went down to the bar and drank hot buttered rums which were delicious… but alcoholic. Lil Bitch insisted upon buying us shots of Jameson on the way back since he didn’t think he could make it all the way back to my place through the snow (we were walking), so we stopped at The Draft and had shots.

When we got back home, LB was in that special surly phase of drunkeness. He started talking about how his stepsister got raped in France and how she deserved it because she had narced on her classmates in high school or something. After about the 15th exclamation of “The bitch DESERVED it!” I tried to change the subject to no avail, but it was time to leave for the show so whatever.

LB has been already pretty tanked for some time now, yet still we get beers at the show– $4 for a 16 oz PBR, which LB rants on about being criminal. He even texted Pete a poorly spelled and even poorly worded rant about how it’s all his fault PBR is so expensive damn hipsters. I wasn’t quite sure of his logic, but this is Little Bitch we’re talking about. Logic is not one of his strong points on the soberest of days.

The opening band were called Shepherdess, and while they weren’t exactly my thing, LB decided they were the worst band in the history of music and proceeded to tell me this in between yelling “YOU SUUUUUUUUUCKK!” at them. I tried repeatedly to shut him up, which of course just made him rowdier. Eventually the bouncer came over and cut him off from further drinking. Thus, he tried to get me to buy him a drink. The conversation went like this:

LB: Buy me a drink. I can’t get one myself.

ME: there’s a reason you’re cut off.

LB: I want a drink

ME: sucks to be you!

LB: I want beer.

ME: I want a pet unicorn.

LB (shouting): UNICORNS CAN SUCK MY DIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!

When he realized that I was not going to buy him a drink, he yelled “THIS IS FASCIST BULLSHIT! I’M OUTTA HERE!” and stomped off. I was a bit relieved, to tell you the truth, and pushed up closer to get a better spot to see Mission of Burma. This is the one time being short is awesome– you can pretty much shove your way to the front of a concert and nobody cares because pretty much everyone can see over your head anyway. it almost negates the fact that if you’re short, you can’t see a damn thing at concerts unless you are in the very front anyway!

Anyway, the band starts and, as always, they are awesome. They get 2 songs in when I start getting texts.

“Where are you? I’m scared and alone.”

I tell him to go wait for me at my house.  He replies that he doesn’t know how to get there. I text him directions (it’s less than a mile home). He saysto come get him, he’s still confused. I text him the house number and tell him to get a cab.

“But I dint [sic] do anything! I’m cold and lost.”

Finally it dawns on me that if he really does manage to find his way back to my place, he will get into his ginormous SUV and drive home, probably killing himself as well as mow down a bus full of nuns chaperoning orphans to a party with kittens or something.  I leave after the third song and all the way home he rants about how it’s a conspiracy and he has every right to heckle crappy bands and it’s because of the Obama administration that everyone is forced to be polite and how he’s going to vote Republican and he’s never going back to that fascist place and fuck Mission of Burma, they’re not really punks if they let bouncers kick rowdy drunks out of their shows etc. I stick up for the bouncer, and, after calling me a “dumb bitch” and a “stupid cunt” several more times, he says possibly the best line of the night:

WHY DON’T YOU GO FUCK NEWT GINGRICH, SINCE YOU LOVE THE DOMINANT PARADIGM SO MUCH!

I don’t know, the unicorn line was pretty good too, but it didn’t contain the phrase “dominant paradigm” used without irony.

We get back to my place and I physically wrestle his car keys away. He calls me many more bad names and insults my political views, my hypocrisy and mentions how “slaves like [me] exist to suck the cocks of  the dominant paradigm.”

“Well the dominant paradigm is telling you to get your fucking ass into bed and sleep it off!” yes, I couldn’t think of a better witty comeback. I was fairly furious at this point.

Cursing, he climbs onto my bed and, after muttering about fascism and stuff a bit more, falls asleep, snoring loudly. I go downstairs to sleep on the couch. Sometime in the early morning, LB finds the keys I left for him and leaves. I go back up into my bed, since I’m sleeping on the small 2-person couch because Tanya is sick and crashing on the big couch. I notice that the pillow is upside down– it’s the pillowcase I decorated myself of a menorah, and it’s menorah-side-down.

That’s what it looked like after I finished it (it came with crayons)– The punchline to the night is…  it no longer looks like that because when I turned it over I discovered that it was covered with used burrito. Yes, LB had turned the pillow over rather than clean it up. W.T.F.!?!?!?

I wish I could say

That’s when I reached for my revolver.

SETTING: my mom’s car. I am in the back seat with the oblivious nephews, one is frantically texting all his friends and the other one is oddly quiet. Moth is the passenger. Slug is driving. We are discussing how annoying it is that everything has inspirational messages on it.

MOTH: have you seen those necklaces? You know, that jewelry? With that what is it, a heart on it? It’s that actress. You know, the British one. Jean. Joan.

ME: I have no clue what you’re talking about.

MOTH: That one from that tv show. You know, about the doctor. it’s SO UGLY! Seriously. it’s the ugliest stupidest thing ever.

ARI: How ugly is it?

MOTH: It’s so ugly that… that if ROBERT DOWNEY JUNIOR asked me to MARRY him, and gave me one of those necklaces… Well first we’d have to get rid of Doug.

DOUG: yeah, don’t forget that part!

ME: So Robert Downey Jr. helps you hide the body…

MOTH: So Robert Downey Jr. helps me hide Doug’s body… and then he asks me to marry him and gives me one of those neckaces. Medicine Woman! That’s her show. Quinn…

ME: Jane Seymour!

MOTH: THAT’S IT! So Robert Downey Jr. gives me one of those… they’re called “open hearts” and they’re hearts that aren’t closed so you are reminded to keep your heart open or some bullshhh….. bull-oney.

ARI: You almost said the S word!

MOTH: Anyway, I’d be like, “sorry, Bob. I’m gonna go dig Doug up.”

DOUG: Awww, you’d rather be with my rotting corpse than with Robert Downey Jr’s ugly jewelry! Honey, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said!

=========

Yes, my family is kind of insane, but at least they’re entertaining!

less preferable than my stepdad's rotting corpse.

So dear Santa, here’s my wishlist for the Perfect Christmas Album:

I’d like one where

1.  you can understand the lyrics
2. It have no guitar solos
3. it have no slow jams, though those are kind of funny, especially when Mariah Carey is involved.
4. it have a minimal amount of original songs unless they are sufficiently funny as to be entertaining.
5. There are no children’s choirs present
6. “Santa Baby” is not included
7. there is a minimal amount of bells, chimes, glockenspiels and music box noises.
8. If you’re going to sing in a foreign language, please make an attempt to pronounce it correctly. If you don’t know French, just don’t sing “Un Flambeau, Jeannette Isabelle!” It’s simple as that! “Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella” may not sound as good, but it will be less painful than you mangling French.
9. Avoid the token Hannukah song. Let’s face it, good Hannukah songs may exist, but the average non-Hannukah celebrater only knows “I have a Little Dreydl” which kind of blows unless you are 5 years old.

When people try to make Christmas carols RAWK!, it usually fails miserably. This may be because most “traditional” carols (i.e. those written before 1900 or so) are written in 6/8 time. A lot of them, like “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger” are lullabies, and lullabies are often in 6/8 because it lends itself to more of a rocking motion. Ironically then, that it doesn’t RAWK!, since most rock music is in 4/4.

Anyway, that’s my wish list for listening to X-mas music this season. So far, She and Him’s christmas album is OK. That is, when it was playing I completely didn’t notice it was on which is a good sign!

My favorite Christmas albums:

Firestone presents Your Favorite Christmas Carols Volume 5 with Julie Andrews

I had this album when I was a kid and was completely obsessed with it. Yes, it’s cheesy and overblown, but I keep hearing tracks from it in various stores and Julie Andrews still holds up. The other volumes (I had a green one and a gold colored one and maybe a red one?) just weren’t as good.

Mojo Nixon and the Toadliquors “Horny Holidays”

This is awesome, especially “Good King Wenceslaus” where Mojo admits nobody actually knows the words to this so everybody just sing “la la la”– a classic! They also sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus.

Jim Jones, “A Dipset Christmas” — come on, who could resist a song called “Ballin’ on Christmas?”

2 Live Jews “Christmas Jews”– I used to have a collection of Jews with Christmas Albums (i.e., Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow), but I had to abandon it because I realized I would have to actually purchase Kenny G’s album, and even I have limits to my kitschy compulsions. Anyway, 2 Live Jews’ album was the crowning glory of this (or any holiday) collection. Anyway, sing “Bagels and bagels and bagels and lox” to “Jingle Bell Rock” and it’s just awesome times a million.

Bootsy Collins, “Christmas is 4 ever” – Bootsy is just awesome.

Various Artists: “A John Waters Christmas”– this one is almost cheating. It’s supposed to be awesome in that kitschy way, and it totally delivers.

I’m sure there are a couple more Christmas albums that don’t make me homicidal, but I can’t think of them right now…

ME: Stop tailgating me, dumb head!

KID: What him doing?

ME: he’s driving poorly.

KID: ‘TOP it, dumbhead!!!

ME: You shouldn’t call people dumbheads. I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.

KID: I just HATE dumb heads. They so stupid. They make me angry. Stupid dumbheads. We put all dem dumbheads in box and just look at them.

ME: good idea. Let’s put them all in a box.

KID: I HATE dumbheads! Dey stupid faces! HAHAHAH STUPID FACE. I call dem STUPID FACE!

ME: You shouldn’t really call people stupid face. They are not good drivers. Just call them ‘bad drivers.’

KID: I HATE stupid faces! Dey DOUCHE FACE!!! HAHAHAH DOUCHE FACE

~~at this point, I decide not to even interfere; any talk of not insulting people will just make him stronger. He will feed off the forbidden words energy like those Star Trek aliens they tried to shoot with the photon torpedoes.~~

KID: I hate them! I kill them wif my super powers! I not kill dem little bit, I kill them big big big bit with my super hero cape! I smash them with my super hero cape! I just smash dem wif my cape and dey be DEAD! I make dem DEAD, stupid face!

::sigh:: I guess this is that Inner Male Aggression they’re always talking about. He’ll grow up to like westerns and fry ants with magnifying glasses. Look out world.

::as I’m writing this, he is seeing how close he can get a drinking straw to his eye before it goes in. He keeps blinking and laughing when he accidentally stabs his eye with the straw.

::yesterday he was trying really hard to “bwow gwape wif stwaw” (i.e., blow a huge grape out of a tiny straw that came with a juice box). Thus I introduced the concept of a pea shooter. I got a regular sized straw, and since we didn’t have any peas, I made some ammo out of small balls of tin foil. the kid was entranced with shooting the balls out of a straw. He was totally into shooting them at the couch and then scrambling around and finding them and doing it again… until I hear “I EAT AMMO NOW!” I turn around and he has that smug look of satisfaction. “I eat ammo. It in ‘tomach it go down down [points down to where his esophagus is], make Big Ew! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH!” He has grasped the concept of eating food and then pooping it out again and is endlessly amused by this. “I POOP AMMO!!!!!” I guess he likes the idea of crapping silver balls. oy vey. Maybe he’ll command me to “CWEAN MY DDDJJJJJUNK!” again when I change his diaper. I must say I’ve never been commanded to clean anyone’s junk before, but there has to be a first time for everything!

Needless to say, Pea-Shooter Time was over quickly, and may never be reinstated. Maybe when he’s 40.

I’ve been sick for the past week. The sick food that I like is soup (don’t care what kind; if it’s from a can or envelope that’s just fine) and applesauce. TW & TJ went apple picking and brought home a big sack of apples, so whenever a various housemate would say “do you need anything at the store?” and I would say “applesauce,” they would laugh thinking I was joking. I was not. For whatever reason when I’m sick, I just want applesauce! I spent a good 2 days sleeping and generally feeling like crap. On the 3rd day, I stuffed myself full of cold meds and drove to Woburn (about 20 miles away in the ‘burbs) to go to jury duty. I got lost getting there. Woburn has this common in the middle of town the “bowling green” that I kept getting stuck in the wrong lane for and driving round and round. Plus, my directions were wrong to begin with.

I get downstairs in the courthouse to the lovely humming fluorescently lit room peppered with well thumbed copies of Popular Mechanics and Good Housekeeping and nobody tells me what to do. Everyone seems to have papers in hand that they had filled out ahead of time. I stand in line, filling out one that’s on the table. The lady in charge informs me that I’m at the wrong courthouse, that I should be at the district court instead of the city court or something, but it doesn’t matter since I live in the wrong county anyway. Wait, what? Whatever entity is responsible for sending you jury summonses thinks I still live in Cambridge, which is in… uh… Middlesex? Essex? Sussex? some county that isn’t Suffolk, which is where I live now. So really, why would a Somethingsex county send a jury summons to someone in another county? Wouldn’t they know something was amiss when they addressed the envelope? When I confirmed my attendance within 10 days after getting the summons? When they sent me the confirmation letter and then later on the reminder? This whole time I’m talking to the lady, I’m in a zombie-like state and I could barely croak out responses to her questions. The cool thing that I brought away from this experience is that “summonsed” is really a real word. You are apparently summonsed to be in a jury, not summoned. I don’t know why this word cracks me up so much. Summonsed. Hehe.

Anyway,  I drove home in a  massive traffic jam because half the Nawth Shaw was flooded. 95 was a parking lot and I spent 1/2 hour barely ever getting out of first gear… to discover that I was going North instead of South. What does this have to do with applesauce you ask? Because when I got home I was like, “I’M MAKING SOME GODDAMN APPLESAUCE IF IT KILLS ME!” So I did. It sucked. It was awful because I put no effort into it; I made it like I would make mashed potatoes, but then was too sick to even mash it properly. Boiling the apples took all the flavor out, so basically it was like eating slightly lumpy water. Ah me and my First World Problems.

Last night when I was searching to see if I could watch the PBS Prohibition mini-series on the innernets I happened to scroll past an applesauce recipe that looked interesting. I wrote it down and made it today and HOLY CRAP IT IS AWESOME!!! here’s the recipe:

Back up. What was this all about?

I spent the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at the Brattle Theater watching Crispin Glover narrate his “Big Slide Show” and then show his 2007 film It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE!

OK, first I went to Tanya & Terrence’s post-wedding beach picnic on the Cape and then drove home and rode my bike to Cambridge to see Crispin Hellion Glover at the Brattle Theater. More about The Wedding Preparations That Spent Weeks Eating My Soul at another time (probably in a long rambling post that will come after [i.e., above] this one).

You may know Crispin Glover from starring in one of my all-time favorite movies, Willard. I liked Willard because it is about rats. Being born in the year of the rat, I relate well to Buddha’s Favorite Animal (so I’m told the rat was). I even had a pin that said “WWWD?” with the silhouette of a rat that I got from Newbury Comics– I was the only one who had any clue what it meant (and I had been working there the least amount of time)! Had Willard not been about rats would I have loved it so much? What if the eponymous protagonist had been able to communicate with wombats? Would I have liked it as much then? OK, bad example; that would have been AWESOME. What about… horses? I hate horses. Would it have rocked so much? Maybe not, but Crispin Glover has a way of making any movie awesome. Even Back To The Future,  which I am still sore about having to have seen three times against my will (thanks a lot school, welfare camp and then school again for making us watch this movie). Not that BttF was a *bad* movie, just that as an impatient dorky 12 year old I would rather have, I don’t know, watched Monty Python & the Holy Grail for the 800th time or something.

Anyway, Crispin Glover’s slide show consisted of him narrating pages from his books. He’s written a bunch of books, or rather, created books– he takes books, most of them look like they’re from the Victorian era, and changes words around, omits bits and switches things so they become about something totally different. In short, it is SO COOL! It’s that kind of post-modern thing that sounds lame when you try to describe it, but is really nifty when you actually see it. I bought one book called Concrete Inspection that includes… pictures of medical procedures from the late 1800s? Truthfully, I can’t remember, though I read it more than once. I’ve been looking for the book for 3 days now. I can’t remember where I put it. Anyway, as a collector of surgery textbooks from the Victorian era I can appreciate it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xliontamer/2802087272/in/photostream/

Ok, there’s my Flickr thing, I can’t link to individual photos anymore apparently. You’ll get to see an exciting photo of ELEPHANTIASIS OF THE SCROTUM, as is still the #1 search term that leads people to this blog. I was going to buy the book Rat Catcher, another one of C.H.G.’s books, near and dear to my heart because of the rodent theme, but I didn’t have enough cash on me and by the time I got back from the ATM, it had sold out. Alas.

***************************************

Holy crap, I’ve been working on this entry for 3 weeks and I still haven’t finished it. Probably because I can’t think of enough ways to say that CRISPIN GLOVER IS AWESOME!!!

His movie was interesting, too– it was written by a guy with cerebral palsy as a sort of 1970s movie-of-the-night thing. As such, the plot was pretty straightforward, the dialogue was basic, and there was a lot of booty. A lot. Now I understand that CHG wants to break taboos, but breaking sexual taboos is the bread and butter of the amateur artist who wants to be “edgy.” Lord knows I’ve sat through enough student and barely-out-0f-art-school performance art pieces for weird visual sexual things to be totally blasé to me. Yes, I’m a jaded, cynical bitch. I hear the words “break taboos of [incest, rape, sex, etc.] and just yawn. Anyway, I must say that the sex scenes in this movie between a wheelchair-bound middle-aged guy with cerebral palsy and young hot chicks was just weird and disturbing enough for me to find kind of fascinating. The whole thing could have been totally tacky, but the stark yet striking art direction, the direction itself, and the soundtrack made it really cool. I’ve lamented the fact that the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh symphony is way overused for dramatic effect in movies. In <i>Zardoz</i> it was just distracting. In <i>The King’s Speech</i> it seemed tawdry and like a cheap manipulative special effect. It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE! is the only movie in which I think Beethoven worked for and not against the filmmaker’s intentions. There was also a lot of of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, which was sort of weird at first because you’re used to hearing it either relating to Christmas things, or backing up prancing hippos and such. However, I think it totally worked, too. There was one scene with a girl whose apartment was decorated in arabesque arches and middle-eastern looking décor. She was wearing flowing harem pants, and the music to that particular scene was the “Arabesque” from the Nutcracker.  At the book signing at the end, after I spent 2 hours in line because of course I was dead last (how predictable, me!), I asked CHG about the connection, figuring he had some deep reason for it since he seems like a totally analytical kind of guy. He said he hadn’t noticed that. I was actually kind of psyched that such a weird coincidence occurred! I also asked about his middle name, Hellion, because, as a name nerd, it always struck me as being really awesome. Yes, it is his real middle name. Rock on!