A couple months ago I sat in my friend Peabody's kitchen while she made us dinner, discussing a blogger whose husband and kids had taken a philanthropic trip to help needy people. Peabody mentioned having been inspired by them and nonchalantly announced, "I bought a couple kids on the Internet today."
Stunned, and attempting to formulate an appropriate response, I sat there silently as she continued, "I had such terrible buyer's remorse that I had to go to Target and buy a shirt."
I instantly fell in love with the band Pink Martini the first time I heard it. I love the sound, the philosophy, the look, the plinky piano; I love all of it. So check it out. What else do you have to do besides pick the lint out of your toes? Press play and read.
From their website, because they explain it better than I could:
"Pink Martini is like a romantic Hollywood musical of the 1940s or 50s – but with a global perspective which is modern,” says founder and artistic director Thomas M. Lauderdale. “We bring melodies and rhythms from different parts of the world together to create something which is new and beautiful.The Portland, Oregon-based ‘little orchestra’ was founded in 1994 by Lauderdale, a Harvard graduate and classically trained pianist, to play political fundraisers for progressive causes such as civil rights, the environment, affordable housing and public broadcasting. In the years following Pink Martini grew from four musicians to its current twelve, and has gone on to perform its multilingual repertoire on concert stages and with symphony orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Canada and the United States."At one moment, you feel like you’re in the middle of a samba parade in Rio de Janeiro, and in the next moment, you are suddenly in a French music hall of the 1930s or in a palazzo in Napoli. It’s like an urban musical travelogue."
Sympathique
I feel a wave of correspondence coming on so if you want on my pen-pal list send your snail mail addy to me at guenosdias847 at gmail dot com.
Put "PLEASE VIOLATE MY MAILBOX" in the subject line so I can differentiate yours from the spam.
So yeah, I've been in the guest bed for the past three days, unshowered, laying in a pile of the things she left behind in her haste Monday morning and talking to Max about how much . . . *sniff* . . .
. . . about . . .*sniff* . . .
. . . about how much we fucking love her.
I find that wearing her bra helps keep her close to my heart.
I miss her so much. It's too quiet and normal around here now.
I'm really glad that we fucked up, drinking until 5 or 6 am when she had a 10:55 am flight, because I don't think I'd have been able to let her out of the car if I'd been sober when I dropped her off.
The entire weekend was awesome - tons of food, tons of booze, and sightseeing and talking to strangers and whacking my elbow and losing my camera case - but the highlight of the whole thing for me was was racing across the hall Monday morning with just 40 minutes to get her to the airport yelling "DUDE! IT'S TEN! GET UP! WE HAVE TO GO! NOW!" and seeing her pop out of bed right onto her feet and realizing she'd slept in the Sacajawea costume.
How are you supposed to go on living after something like this ends?
I guess I'll just take it one Godzilla step at at time.
Crap! I almost forgot! I have a confession to make. The Snapvine message left for Zibbs on Monday was actually a voice mail message we left for someone else at 4:30 am (Central.) This person either felt bad for Zibbs not getting the Snapvine message we promised or kinda wanted to rub it in his face a little. Either way, these are the highlights, straight from the horse's mouth/interpretation: I chastise this person for not being awake in the time zone most conducive to drunk dialing (Pacific); Whiskey attempts heavy breathing and out of concern for her health, I ask if she's hot; a bunch of incoherence and giggling; Whiskey yells in the background, "I saw Gwen's bush!" and then I explain that we were changing costumes so it's perfectly acceptable to be naked in the dining room.
But this does not mean that we weren't thinking of The Good Doctor. We were. And we really did try to leave him a message, a task I'm sure a monkey could perform, but of which we were entirely incapable.
3/23/2009
You asked for it
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Gwen
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I'm a great hostess,
Stuff that's crap-your-pants scary
3/19/2009
I hope this post bores Zibbs past the brink of insanity.
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Gwen
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Apparently I gotta be the asshole,
My Pal Zibbs
Apparently somebody has grown tired of reading our shitty blogs. I suspect I'm one since he has stopped commenting here with any regularity so I hope to push him past his ability to stand it with this post which chronicles the last two days of my life in mostly boring pictures - you know, the ones I took when I was out living my life, not blogging it.
On Wednesday I walked in the back door after a long day at work to find a favorite pitcher of mine in pieces on the kitchen floor:
"Jesuschristgoddamnfuckingcats!"
Then I went out and drank my body weight in Irish cider:
I woke up the next day with a super fun, totally dehydrated, need a banana bag type hangover but sweated it out cleaning up the yard. I smelled awesome when I was done, like day-old beer, cigarettes, unrestful sleep, and sweat. You totally would have made out with me.
I took the day off work to trim my bush.
The next couple pictures are for Son of A Thomas, my gardening soulmate. Dude, here's what's blooming so far, hyacinths and daffodils:
I cut one hyacinth - ONE - and took it to work Monday. My office, and the general area around me, still smells divine. If you don't have any of these, please, put some in next fall. You will love them.This is the lilac tree I keep telling you about that I planted last year. It made through the winter! Yay! As soon as it blooms it will also smell amazing. I like to take cuttings of the most fragrant things in my garden and give them to the little kids next door to take to their mom. I bet your little ones would get a real kick out of this, too.
I couldn't help myself in Lowe's and had to have these:
Oh! I also cut off half of my hair:
This is what it looks like now.
This is what it looks like from the back.
(Is that Zibbs character gone yet? I was sure he'd be gone by now. I mean, there were some of these I was going to show you anyway, but really? The back of my new hairc. . . zzzzz. Alright, this next couple should do the trick.)
Here's the map of Minnesota delineated regionally by Hotdish that Whiskeymarie sent me for my birthday last year. I just wanted her to know that she won't see it in my house because I hung it in my office where I can see it every day.
And here's a bunny I found in my yard while I was working. To the left of the bunny, really tiny and bright green, is the bleeding heart I planted last year. It's tiny in this picture because it's the kind of plant that dies completely back every fall.
And here's an empty pitcher and the remains of the yummy blue margaritas we had at dinner tonight:
I think I just heard the back door slam. Mission accomplished, bitches. Don't forget - Whiskeymarie will be here in two days. TWO DAYS. I just peed a little.
3/16/2009
May you be forty years in heaven before the devil knows yer dead.
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Gwen
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Stuff that's crap-your-pants scary,
Vacations
March 2000.
One week in Ireland.
Two girls.
Hostels and public transportation.
(At least until the strike.)
We made do, taking a daytrip to Blarney Castle and Cobh with a couple other hostelers, one of whom had a car.
You can't tell, but this is me, kissing The Stone. It was really cool - the stone has been kissed smooth - but mostly it was scary. ("Mostly it was scary." And they say that Gift of Eloquence thing is a myth. Pfffft!)
There's really nothing I can add to this.
I fell in love with the town Cobh (pronounced "Cove") as soon as I laid eyes on it. It has the very interesting distinction of being the last port of call for the Titanic before it went into open water and also being where the Germans sunk the Lusitania, a passenger ship, in WWI. Together, the number one and number two most famous passenger ship disasters. Weird, no? The museums were fantastic.
I loved that there were no supermarkets. You want bread? Go to the bakery. You want meat? Go see Henry Molloy. And if he ain't in there, go 'round the corner and check there at Maguire's. Henry's been known t'get deep in his pints, may the saints watch over 'im and his nine remainin' fingers.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
3/16/2009
This may bring the Internet to its knees.
Posted by
Gwen
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Blogstalking,
Stuff that's crap-your-pants scary
Whoa.
It's on. It's on like Donkey Kong.
She'll be here Saturday!
Kooky things are sure to happen!
Economists predict increased alcohol sales.
Yaks that are Blue have already lamented and made demands.
Ming at the Musuem could be on our to-do list.
All I can guarantee is food, booze and monkeys.
Reprobates unite!
Is it Saturday yet?
Eternal, this week will seem.
If you haven't seen Comedians of Comedy, you need to sign up for Netflix, put it at the top of your queue, wait 2-3 days for it to arrive, and then watch it immediately. I'm just sayin'.
Or you could come over and watch my copy but keep yer damn feet off the coffee table, slob.
3/14/2009
Has anyone seen my motivation? I can't find it.
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Gwen
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Lazy is as lazy does,
Married to the Sea
Sass just texted and asked me to come here and explain why she won't be around for a bit. Apparently her grandmother, who had been ill with Alzheimer's for some time, passed away while she was on the air today. Knowing how much her day on the radio meant to her, her husband and mom appropriately opted to not tell her about it until she was done and off the air. She called me immediately after the show, sobbing. At first I thought the morning show people had been mean to her when it was over and I was prepared to drive to Springfield and punch some people in the neck. Sadly, not the case.
As I understand things, Grandma lived in Louisiana. Sass will be out of town for a while. She didn't want any of you to worry or wonder why she suddenly disappeared after her radio debut.
Our gal is really hurting. I know I don't have to ask but I will - please keep her in your thoughts and pray that she and her family can find healing and peace during this difficult time.
UPDATED TO ADD: You are certainly welcome to leave messages for her here but if you leave them at her place she might get your comments via email.
Sass is on the radio today! You can listen HERE.
I've been listening (she's doing great!) and they are talking about this thing Sass does where she adds/subtracts/divides numbers on license plates that she sees while out driving. I wish we had talked about this last weekend because I do a similar thing. I've only told a handful of people that I do it because it's kind of weird.
When I talk to people I count the letters in their sentences and try to find a way to split the sentence into even parts. I've been doing this odd little brain exercise since I was a kid and over time I developed rules that help me divide the sentence evenly - like capital letters and punctuation are worth 2 and I can hyphenate words but only where hyphenation is actually allowed by the rules of punctuation.
Here's an example: Let's pretend we're talking and you say, "I like it when you tell me I'm sexy." Technically that sentence has 26 letters. Easy peasy, right? Not so. There's an apostrophe in "I'm" and you have to count it. So how do you divide this sentence into equal parts? Like this . . .
I like it when you
15 - the capital I is worth 2
tell me I'm sexy.
15 - again, the capital I is worth two.
If I had needed it to be 16 I'd have counted the period as two.
I could also have hypehanted sex-y if needed.
Funny, the station is now playing Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" . . . "Does that make me crazy? Possibly." Although I choose to believe it's a way to keep my mind busy while you're boring me.
This. Is. All. Your. Fault.
A week ago Monday you just HAD to go and talk about it. And I just HAD to talk about how I shouldn't ever be picked. And karma being what it is, this arrived the very same day.
I haven't opened it, keeping it intact for scanning, so let's just see when I have to appear . . . Oh! How 'bout that? April 20th. Four twenty. Apparently karma also has a sense of humor.
The other day I was sitting at my desk at the office, quietly toiling for The Man, when a guy came banging and clanging through the back door, pushing a huge cage. I calmly turned to him and said, "Oh, good! They finally approved the cage for my monkey." He laughed and carried on with his business.
A couple minutes later he came back by and asked, "You're not really keeping a monkey back here, are you?" I grinned and replied, "Not as far as you know."
I can't wait until he comes back to pick up the cage.
I'm kidding! We had a ball. I feel like I've always known Sass and I can't wait to meet her family and do it again.
The giggling commenced (that means started, ask her) before I even opened the door and was only complimented by the bloody marys, made by hand with the two cup method and pepper and shit, and the sunlight on my front porch. When this inevitably devolved into Johnny Cash dancing and playing on the internet we decided maybe we should change venue. And eat.
The rest of the day featured:
- yummy wine, spring rolls and clear noodles
- seeing two different buildings with cars driven into them (one was sideways!)
- a driving tour of Tower Grove Park (top down, of course. the car, not us.)
- an Indian
- three breweries
- more gossip (Yes, we talked about you. Too bad for you.)
- vintage shopping
- sex toys, BDSM gear and stripper shoes; and
- playing in a busy street like a coupla retards until the people stopped at the lights were cheering us on and honking
(As I made up the other half of this oh-so-challenged duo I only have my view of things.)
Oh, and Sass got some pussy. All in six hours.
She texted after she left and said she was sleeping in her car behind my garage tonight. I know she'd like me to think it's because she's addicted to me but it's really because she's nosy and dying for a message from Brian.Before we get to today's video I am pleased to announce that yesterday was fun. We didn't talk anything through, we pretended nothing ever happened and moved on like we always do, but we had a nice day and really, that's all I can ask. I didn't even have to resort to a movie. Thanks for the good vibes. You guys rawk.
And in honor of Miss Sass coming to see me on this glorious spring day, I searched youtube for a sassy video for today's matinee. I found many showcasing a semi-automatic rifle called SASS and recording artist Sass Jordan but I think this one captures the essence of our Sass (athletic, graceful, beautiful, jazzy and amazing) better than those:
3/07/2009
Today could be disastrous and painful. Or fun.
Posted by
Gwen
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Stuff that's crap-your-pants scary
In a couple hours I am driving up to Alton, IL to pick up my mom and take her to lunch for her birthday. We haven't spoken since June of last year. I wasn't invited to Thanksgiving; I wasn't invited to Christmas. (With our family it is entirely possible that nothing was done but I was neither consulted nor advised if that was the case.)
Truth be told, if I hadn't emailed her a week ago and asked her if she wanted to celebrate in our usual fashion (pigging out on crab legs at Red Lobster) we wouldn't be doing this at all. It took her three days to respond and when she did she said, "Okay, I like crab legs as much as the next guy." I am about ready to puke right now from nerves and dread. Please send happy vibes my way; I could use all the help I can get with this one.
I have a second birthday celebration even deeper into Illinois at 6:30 pm so I have to find something to do with myself for about five hours this afternoon. I have a loose plan to go see The Watchmen on the advice of mjenks and Scope. I think a potentially violent fantasy escape after lunch may prove helpful.
But my reward for today's cross-Illinois birthday marathon? Sass is coming to visit tomorrow. I've already received one email offering money for awkward photos of her. I love that everyone realizes I can be bought. Did you guys know my bathroom door doesn't lock? Tell me what you've got and I'll see what I can do.
3/04/2009
Mama needs cash for flip flops and Uncrustables.
Posted by
Gwen
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Labels:
Blogstalking,
Quizzes and Such
Okay, I've only got 30 more minutes to enter this awesome kick-ass contest (rules: link to your favorite posts) so I have to make this quick. I wanted to tell you why I picked each one but I DON'T HAVE TIME! DAMN PROCRASTINATION!
On the recommendation of someone who has a discerning eye I'm including this series about my favorite weekend house guest, Fernando von Bakonstein. (Just a reminder to start at the bottom to read chronologically.) Fernando's keeper, McGone, is currently on blog recess, but he was kind enough to send his world-traveling pig to stay with me one weekend in May last year. His prior travels had taken him to exotic places like Paris and NYC, where he met Lorraine Bracco. To say I was intimidated by his fame is an understatement, but magically that weekend turned out to be one of the best of the year and this series has it all. I swear. I credit the pig.
Moving on, I simply can't enter any contest without including the obscenity series. I think this series of posts is what put me on the map. I've had more than one of you tell me that this was the week I landed the hook. (Don't let your boss/wife/kids read this one over your shoulder.)
And here's a handful more to prove I can write something other than a series:
Thanks to Auds for hosting such a fun contest! A certain someone summed it up well when he commented, "Wow, when I narrow it down to 5-10 entries, my blog looks really good!" He was right and we all know how much I like to stroke my own ego.
The other contestants are listed at the end of her post so if you're looking for some new addictions, check 'em out. Just don't leave me, baby. I love you. Those other blogs won't go down on you in a theater.
After having been followed at the museum like common criminals on Sunday afternoon (I didn't MEAN to touch the art! I thought it was part of the building. Christ.) we found ourselves hiding in the corner of an antique mall, giggling like idiots over this marvel of repurposing, the Letter Licker.
A kid in California convinced the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to proclaim the first week of March - this week - to be "No Cussing Week." Apparently he made a deal with God to never have sex in exchange for his hamster's life and this is his way of ensuring Puddles lives another day.
My favorite part of the article I read is the paragraph that discusses the harassment he's endured at the hands of low-life shitbag pro-cussers (like you and you and you and ME!) but then tells us exactly where this little pussy will be on Wednesday:
When his No Cussing Club meets at South Pasadena High School on Wednesdays [at 2 p.m. in the south gymnasium; the turdlet wears a queer-bait purple coat] it's not unusual for a nonmember to throw open the door and fire off a torrent of four-letter words. He's also been the target of organized harassment by pro-cussers.
[added by classmates]
As soon as I read the article I called Miss Cleo and for only $19.95 she foretold one fucking beat-down after another for "that asshole" - her term, not mine. The article goes on to say that he hopes to spread this shit worldwide. Who wants to lay odds that the first word out of his pretty little mouth the first time he gets hit is, "Fuck!"?
Greeting from Miss Gwen's house! I just wanted to let you know that we arrived on Saturday, safe and sound, and to thank you ever so much for sending us to live with her. She's great and already said she loves us very much! Her house is really nice and I like it here.
Bobo is having a hard time adjusting but found a place in the house where he feels comfortable and stays there most of the time.
He did, however, start coming around this afternoon while I was taking pictures. He kept doing that Norm MacDonald "Wanderer" move that he thinks is so funny.
I, on the other hand, have been having a ball exploring my new home. Today I learned the hard way that cactuses are prickly and kinda sting.
But Miss Gwen put some crestol salve on it and I was climbing the walls again in no time.
I like to sit here and make faces at her while she watches TV. She said she imagines that's what it's like to watch TV with you, too. That made me laugh.
Well, I have to go. Miss Gwen says we're going to watch a movie about some guy named Steve Zissou. I hope it's good. Anyway, thank you again, Miss Fancy! You picked a good home for us. Miss Gwen is teaching me all kinds of things like how to count and roll the change in this jar and how to make email. She said even a monkey could do it! Maybe I'll send you one once I get good at it.Yours In McGone,
George Monkey
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We're watching you.
Wanna make out?
- Gwen
- One part sarcastic, one part naughty, and all parts awesome. ~ St. Louis, MO ~ You can email me at guenosdias847 at gmail dot com.
I'M A FIRECROTCH!
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