First off, thanks to everyone who contributed Michael Winslow sound-effect suggestions. Unfortunately, the interview fell through due to miscommunication, with bad feelings all around, so it's not likely to happen at all. Sorry.

Second, I'm back from Portland and Seattle, so naturally I'm leaving for St. Louis tomorrow. I have all but forgotten what home looks like.

Third, from this morning:

Me: [Asking if we're taking the train to work together, or Cass is biking.] Are you training today?

Cass: [From downstairs.] Yes. So no sex.

Me: What if it's sex-training?

Cass: It's unlikely to be. Unless we're in Risky Business.

Me: What if we are, though?

Cass: I don't think we are, but we can check. Am I Tom Cruise?

Me: I can't see you, so I don't know for sure who's talking. Maybe you are.

Cass: Well, are you Rebecca De Mornay?

Me: [Looking in the bathroom mirror while putting in contacts.] Oh. Sadly, no.

Cass: Then we probably aren't. I guess I could be Bronson Pinchot, but then I wouldn't get any sex at all.

Me: Hey, Bronson Pinchot practically owns his own small town. Some sectors of the population would find that very sexy.

Cass: I remain dubious about those sectors.

Me: About whether they exist, or whether you would want to bed them?

Cass: Two good questions to ask about anything, really.

I'm-a feelin': tired

So there was a week in New York City, instantly followed by a week with my sister visiting. There was one day between her leaving town and gfish arriving for a weekend, during which we ran all over town. Then three days after that, Cass and I flew to Portland for the Lovecraft film festival and annual visitation with ladymajor and phaedrusdeinus. Who are, today, forcing me to slow down and take deep breaths and stay in the house and not run all over creation because they are the meanest people ever, and also would like to see me sane again.

Which may not happen if this keeps up:

Cass: So last night at the New Horror panel, one of the panelists got a cell-phone call, and he actually took it. And he moved maybe three feet from the stage, and he's saying things like "What? No! That's impossible! I didn't do anything wrong!" into the phone. And the other panelists are laughing at him and saying things like "Of course, the BEST horror is the kind that happens in your PERSONAL LIFE. The kind with STAKES. The kind of thing that maybe GIVES YOU A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE." And he's just talking louder and louder from three feet away in order to continue his conversation. I wanted to slug him.

ladymajor: Oh, sure!

Cass: And he looked like such a douche, too. Though I try not to use that word.

Me: Or judge people on how they look?

Cass: Oh, no, I do that all the time. But I try not to overuse the term "douche" when it's so popular right now. There are so many other terms that are falling out of favor that might be more appropriate. "Dick," for instance. He really seemed like a dick.

phaedrusdeinus [Appearing as if by magic from the other room.] I'm sorry, did you just say that too many people are using douche in a place where dick would be more appropriate?

Cass: Yeah. [Pause.] OH. [We all break up laughing. The men are forcibly banished from the kitchen.]

ladymajor: Hey, I'm only married to ONE of them.

I'm-a feelin': amused

I'm increasingly convinced that technology can sense — and either actively dislikes, or openly mocks — urgency. It's hard for me to explain why else my email program waited until I went to Tribeca to implode. One day I was at home, working a normal schedule, and with plenty of access to IT help, and everything worked fine. The next day, I was in New York, on a horrifically accelerated schedule, trying to work a full-time job while simultaneously attending a film festival, and my email program decided that I didn't exist, and my last 10 years of emails and contacts didn't exist either. And when I tried to re-link my mail program and my online account and re-sync them, it started trying to download 10 years of accumulated mail from the server, including thousands upon thousands of long-deleted spam messages. I eventually had to just shut the whole thing down and work from webmail until I got home and could hand my laptop over to our IT guy to install a new operating system and restore my old settings from backup.

I went through something similar today. One of our editors was in New York working on a side project, one had to take an emergency vacation day due to a child-care situation, and three more were at a trade fair, so I was the only editor on staff actually in the office. This normally makes for a frantic work day, largely because the only person in the office is the one who gets tapped to answer questions and make judgment calls, but it was particularly fraught because we had someone coming in to test for an open editorial position, and our newswire editor was out so someone had to wrangle all the newswire freelancers, and there was an intern who needed work, and print proofs to check in addition to the rest of the normal Monday work.

My laptop sensed urgency. And weakness. So there was this:

• On Monday we print the proofs of the week's paper and check the layout and the content and send corrections to the designers. When I tried to print, my laptop informed me that I couldn't because I needed additional software which could be downloaded via Software Update. When I tried that, it locked up all my programs for 15 minutes while it worked on installing and downloading software. Meanwhile, I had eight people asking me for things I couldn't provide them. And even with the software finally downloaded, it didn't work. I wound up having to sic IT on the problem again. All I needed to do a simple job was a simple printout, and it took an hour.
  
  
• The job applicant came in to take the test. Unfortunately, no one had informed me when he was coming in, or had given me the test to give him. So when he suddenly showed up, I was caught flat-footed. And no one was contactable to get the test. I wound up getting it off a co-worker's laptop — except that turned out to be the wrong test, as he realized when he was partway through it and came to a segment he'd already seen in a previous testing stage. I tried four times to get the right test, running back and forth between my laptop and his testing laptop and my co-worker's laptop, and every time I thought I'd sent the right file, I opened it and it was the wrong one — probably due to my being flustered, and the files all having similar names. I eventually got it to him, but only after both feeling like an idiot and feeling like all the laptops were deliberately conspiring against me.
  
  
• People were sending me newswires, which had to be edited and slapped up online. The CMS, like my laptop, sensed urgency, and started malfunctioning in a way I'd never seen before, arbitrarily replacing links in a form with the entire text content of a piece. I called our web producer over to see it, and she agreed she'd never seen anything like it and had no idea what it was doing, besides making it impossible for me to post anything.

Basically, it was a VERY FRUSTRATING DAY, during which I felt like I was radiating some sort of anti-technology field. Not that technology was the only thing that wouldn't cooperate — for that matter, when I opened my Tupperware container of soup for lunch, the lid had created a vacuum seal, and opening it somehow sucked the soup upward so it sloshed all over the counter and my hands. It was that kind of day.

It was also the kind of day where it's getting on 1 a.m. and I'm still writing, as compensation for the writing I couldn't get done today while I was fighting computers to the death. But tomorrow I'm going to the annual candy expo, where I expect to encounter very little technology, and a lot of chocolate. I'm going to consider that my reward for surviving today.

ETA: I think my laptop hated this post. And further hates my current urgency in trying to get this review done and get to bed. My only power cord for my laptop is spontaneously no longer functioning, so I have a limited amount of time to get this review done and sent, and a limited amount of time that I'll be able to work remotely en route to and from the expo tomorrow. ARGH. JUST ARGH.

I'm-a feelin': aggravated

Here's a bit of fine craziness: One of our editors is about to conduct an interview with Michael Winslow, the eminently talented maker-of-weird-sound-effect-noises from the Police Academy movies. It was decided that this would, in part, take the form of asking him to make various noises. The interviewer is calling for suggestions:

[We're creating] a video interview with Michael "Man Of 10,000 Sound Effects" Winslow, where we'll prompt Winslow with a list of increasingly ludicrous sound effects, and he'll try to reproduce them on the spot. As such, I'm looking for your help in filling out the list Winslow will perform for us. We want to start simple — think "car alarm" or "crying baby" — and eventually work up to complicated impressions like "machine gun in a washing machine rolling downhill."

Want to participate? Leave suggestions here, and I'll gather them up and forward them on to the interviewer. Deadline is 5 p.m. CST tomorrow, May 3. If you've ever wanted to hear a famous sound-effects man spontaneously create the noise of, say, a basket full of kittens caught on the blade of a speeding-up windmill, or a man trying to pull a giant suction cup off his own face, this is your chance to solicit for it. It'll be up to the interviewer to pick which ones he wants to ask for, and up to Winslow whether he wants to or can actually do them, but you're welcome to suggest all you want, and I'll pass 'em along. And feel free to direct people here; the more suggestions we get, the better the eventual list is likely to be.

I'm-a feelin': excited

And now my sister's on a plane and I'm back in the office, trying to dig my way free of the fallout of two weeks of a barely functional email program. All I really want is a nap, but given my email backlog, I may never again notice the text I sent to my email about this occurrence I wanted to document:

Sunday afternoon, Cass and Tara and I went to brunch at Andies on Clark, but they've stopped doing the fantastic brunch buffet we go there for, so we decided to go elsewhere. First, though, we stopped in across the street at Alleycat Comics, my new go-to for comics: They're well-stocked and clean and well-organized, and the proprietor, Nick, is hugely friendly and fun to talk to. But while I was hanging out in the back, looking at graphic novels, there was this bright little girl, maybe 4 years old, looking at the kids' books. And her dad, who was talking with her mom and baby sibling at the other end of the (small) store, said "You can have one, honey, just pick out the one you want."

And she said, in a calm, conversational voice that could not have reached him, but did not seem to be aimed at me, "I can only have one? No. I can have two. My daddy is the meanest ever. And he does not love me."

It was bizarre, like she was practicing her lines for an upcoming tantrum. Her diction was so precise and thoughtful. I could clearly see herself gearing up for the demand. But when it came, it was "Can I have two, daddy? Please? This one looks nice, and this one too."

I moved away because it was a small shop and I didn't want to openly spy on them, but I can't help but wonder whether she pulled out the "meanest ever" act in the clinch, or that was just a plan that didn't pan out. Either way, just hearing her say it gave me the gigglies. I'll have to keep that in mind next time I don't get my way. "Well. You are the meanest ever, and you do not love me."

I'm-a feelin': amused

I came back from New York last week; I recently realized a lot of people think I'm still there. It's just that I came in at the airport at the same time as my sister — due to a carefully laid plan that unfortunately resulted in my having to leave Manhattan for a New Jersey airport at 3:40 a.m., but hey, it all worked out — and she's been here all week, so I've been too busy to post. Besides which, I took my laptop back to work for repairs, so I haven't had much computer access lately. But I couldn't resist recording this, earlier today:

Me: Do you want to go walking at the deer place, or just head home?

Tara: Which do you want to do?

Me: Deer place! Deer place!

Tara: Okay, fine, but I get to complain twice and whine about wanting to go home and put on comfy pants five times.

Me: I'll let you complain once and whine about wanting to go home and put on comfy pants twice.

Tara: I get two complaints, two demands for comfy pants, and six I-told-you-so's if it starts raining and we have to head back.

Me: One complaint, one comfy-pants demand, and one I-told-you-so.

Tara: Four complaints, six demands for comfy pants, four I-told-you-so's, and at least three I-never-wanted-to-come-here-in-the-first-place's.

Me: You're actually RAISING your demands. That is not how haggling works. So here's my final offer. See that restaurant on the other side of the intersection? Sticky Rice? They serve caterpillars.

Tara: Really?

Me: Yeah, apparently it's a Northern Thai delicacy.

Tara: And you've been there and eaten them, because you're just that brave?

Me: I want to on some level to prove something and out of curiosity, but I've never been able to force myself to do it. Every time I think about it, I think of a plate of those soft fuzzy tentworms that used to take over trees in our neighborhood when we were kids.

Tara: Oh, gross.

Me: Exactly. So here's the deal. One each of complaint, comfy-pants demands, I-told-you-so, and I-never-wanted-to-be-here, and I DON'T take you to Sticky Rice and order you a plate of caterpillars.

Tara: That seems like a reasonable deal, except… You've eaten there before?

Me: A couple of times, with your parents, yeah.

Tara: And you've never been able to suck it up and eat caterpillars? Sounds like you're more afraid of it and weirded out by it than I am. So here's the deal: Two complaints, two comfy-pants, three told-you-so and don't-want-to-be-here, and I don't take YOU to Sticky Rice and order YOU a plate of caterpillars.

Me: …dammit. All right. Sold.

(Then we went to the deer place and saw about 20 deer wandering around in groups of one to six outside of the hiking-path area, but the paths themselves were closed because we'd gotten there too late, and I didn't get complaints or whining or caterpillars or ANYTHING.)

I'm-a feelin': amused

Yesterday was brutal. We were hugely behind on edits and non-editing work, and I'm about to go on vacation with my sister, so I needed to get a ton of me-specific stuff processed and in other people's hands, and long story short, I woke up in an anxiety-ridden sweat at 8 a.m. and worked straight through until 2 a.m. the following morning. I left my hotel room exactly twice: Once to go up six floors to conduct an interview, and once to go down to street level for 15 minutes to grab a sandwich for dinner. I prepared and conducted three interviews in two and a half hours. I saw no films and encountered almost no people and I was squirrely as hell by the time I let myself fall into bed.

Today I still had a ton of work to do, but I felt I had to get out of the hotel for my own health, so I packed up and went down to Tribeca's media lounge, where it was sometimes very loud and chaotic and bored journalists wanted to talk to me — one woman from Venice had been in town for two months and was feeling poorly from living off sandwiches, and wanted to know where I got my salad, and then wanted to talk food and travel, while another wanted to talk about the quality of the piped-in music, and I was all "Uh-huh yeah whatevs." But there were new walls around me at least!

And I got a reasonably giant pile of work shifted out of my inbox and into other people's, and then I was able to escape and head off to my last round of screenings. Except there was no good transit path from the lounge to the theater that didn't involve a bunch of waiting and train-changing, so I decided the hell with it, I was going to be a New Yorker and take a cab. Problem was, when I got into the cab, I made the not-a-New-Yorker mistake of giving him the address of where I was going, instead of the intersection. To be fair, I gave him both. What I said was "I'm going to 66 3rd Ave. It's the AMC Loews theater, at 3rd Ave. and 11th Street." What he apparently heard was "I'm going to 66th and 3rd, and now I'm going to make meaningless unimportant mouth-noises at you for no reason, please tune out." We got about a mile north in heavy traffic before I realized the streets were counting UP, and then I got to be a real New Yorker by getting into a fight with a cabbie. He denied I'd said anything but "66th and 3rd," I pointed out that I'd told him I was going to the theater and where it was, and he said "I don't know where any theater is, I just go where you tell me!" that ended with me snapping "This is bullshit!" and him telling me fine, he wouldn't charge me if I just got out. We were both equally annoyed at each other, but five minutes later, I was feeling bad about it. (I tried to make up the karma by giving my lunch sandwich to a homeless guy on the train, and hoping that somewhere, someone who'd been rude to that homeless guy was overtipping that cabbie.)

But at that point, there was no way I was getting to the movie remotely on time, so I gave it up as a lost cause and wandered around Central Park for an hour to unwind and regain sanity (and it was very pleasant and peaceful, to the point where I didn't even mind when it started to rain), and then just went to my next movie. I liked that one so much, I frantically tapped out questions during the Q&A, then nabbed the director afterward for an impromptu half-hour interview — easily breaking all my records for least amount of interview prep time.

And after that, I went to a final film, which I loved, and stayed for an insane, energetic, wild Q&A, and then went to a bar across the street to talk to one of the filmmakers, and then tried to catch a train uptown. Except my transit card had expired, and the station had no kiosks where I could buy a new one.

So I decided the hell with it again, and hailed another cab, and this time was careful to just give the intersection. And the cabbie greeted me with "How was your day? Did you have a good time?" I said it was terrific, and asked how his was. And then the floodgates were unleashed; he talked my ear off all the way back to the hotel, about the life of a New York City cabbie, and the advice he gives people, and the stories he's seen play out between people who don't mind proposing or breaking up or fighting or snogging in a cab as though the driver didn't count as a witness. He told me everyone in New York is materialistic and shallow and is looking for money and love, but that they never come in the same package. He told me about a woman who was looking for love in the form of a man, any man, from Goldman Sachs, and how he advised her to reconcile with her mother. He told me New York has only three things to offer people: stress, sugar, and high blood pressure. And on and on, an unbroken flow of words that didn't really follow, but were friendly enough. I zoned out and let him talk. It seemed like an appropriate way to end this New York sojourn.

And now I'm really ready for about 10 hours of sleep, but my shuttle picks me up for the airport at the godawful hour of 3:40 a.m., so it'll have to wait. My Tribeca pieces should start posting soon. By the time they do, I'll already be back in Chicago and this whole week will seem like a weird, blurry dream.

I'm-a feelin': sleepy

I'm running out of time in New York, and I'm exhausted and frustrated; so many films left to see, so much work to do, and technology hates me. My email program forgot I existed, so my archives are gone and I have to search for everything via Google Mail interface, and I can't work offline AT ALL. So of course when I got back to the hotel last night, the Internet was completely out. I stayed up for two hours trying to get critical things done online via my phone (like research for my THREE INTERVIEWS IN A ROW this morning) and finally went to bed in a towering helpless rage at 1 a.m. I think I'm doing this whole film-fest thing wrong, getting stressed with everything I'm not accomplishing instead of focusing on what I am.

That aside, last night one of the films I saw was Postcards From The Zoo, a charming, sleepy Indonesian film about a little girl who's abandoned in a zoo and grows up there, working with the animals and a mysterious, quiet boy who dresses like a cowboy and does magic. Then one day they're told only regular zoo employees can live in the zoo, so she and Cowboy have to leave and make their way in the world. Eventually the girl gets a job in a sleazy sex-massage parlor, but even though she's naive and seems to live in her own quiet, magical realm, she treats it all very calmly, and not as degrading or exploitative — it's almost like she sees the men she's servicing as just more zoo animals, clumsy and visceral but not to be taken too seriously emotionally.

The woman sitting next to me in the screening worried me from the second she sat down — she was an older woman with a shock of red-dyed hair, and she immediately begin to ask me what else I'd seen at the festival, then not listen to any of the answers. She kept asking questions — "I want to see The List. What's that about? Who's in it? Where is it playing and when?" and again, not listening to the answers. She told me she was sitting up front because of all of those rude people who liked to text their way through movies. I said, neutrally, "So you sit up front to get away from them?" And she said "What? I've never sat up front before in my LIFE!" like I'd insulted her. And when the host came out to introduce the director and say he'd be doing a Q&A afterward, she said "Good!" very loudly. All the way through the opening bumpers and sponsor messages, she went "Huh!" and "Oh!" and "Aha!" loudly. So I was dreading the film.

But she was blessedly silent until the second the closing credits started. Then she leaned over and told me "I knew a man like that once, that went to massage parlors, and paid girls for it. He couldn't relate to girls. He lived at home with his parents and never grew up. Eventually he got into S&M, you know? He'd go to those clubs and do things to girls he didn't know. He liked to watch women pee. He'd pay for that. Eventually I had to leave him. It was such a turn-off. All that stuff does nothing for me."

THANK YOU RANDOM LADY. Is this why New Yorkers get brusque and snappish about strangers? I again-noncommittally said "Well, a lot of men have trouble relating to women?" and she said "Oh, do you think that's what it is then, with women who see prostitutes and get into S&M? They just have no idea what to do with a woman?" I managed to cut her off by pointing out that the Q&A with the director was about to start.

The Q&A was okay; the director struggled with English a little, and the actor who played the magician/cowboy was there and said almost nothing, and many of the questions were awful, as they tend to be. (One guy rambled on and on with a question I would characterize as "I have seen all your films and know more about you than anyone here, are you impressed with me?") But at the end, one audience member said "This is a question for the Cowboy. Could you do a magic trick?"

And instantly, he reached behind the director's head and pulled out a tiny glowing ball of crimson light and popped it into his mouth, then smiled hugely to show it was gone.

It was so effortless and charming and perfect. Hooray for him, and hooray for the film, and hooray for my alacrity in getting the hell out of there afterward, and away from Sexual History Lady. Who, in retrospect, I should have gotten a phone number from. I could have hooked her up with Famous Film Critic Full Of Sex Questions. Assuming he can relate to women and doesn't live at home, the two of them could have made each other VERY HAPPY.

I'm-a feelin': pensive

It rained all day, and I was in and out of it all day, shuttling around from Theater #1 to the hotel for an interview, then back to Theater #1, then to Theater #2, then out to get a snack, then back to Theater #1 again, where I found out the film I was trying to see was back at Theater #2. I spent a lot of time in the rain. Fortunately I brought a bright blue poncho that I bought on my last NYC trip and never wore. It looks mildly ridiculous, but it keeps my hair and clothes and bag full of laptop dry, and whatever meal I'm smuggling into the theater hidden, so get bent, haters.

But tonight when I decided I was too tired for movie #5 of the day (even though it was in Theater #2 where I already was) and just came back to the hotel, I was waiting for the elevator when a group of people waiting for a seat in the hotel restaurant next to me turned around. One of them was this tall, thin, shaggy-haired, hippie-chic-dressed dude who reminded me of a young Keith Richards, with a little Bob Dylan thrown in. He was standing right next to me when he turned around, and he just stopped and stared. And stared. And started leaning back slowly, still staring, like his feet were glued to the ground but he was trying to escape me. So I started imitating him, with the bug eyes and the lean, because it was so ridiculous-looking. I guess he was drunk or on something or just a weird dude, because it was a very theatrical reaction.

Finally, he blurted "Who are you supposed to be? Cookie Monster?"

I was tired and annoyed. I said "Sure, whatever. If you have a cookie, I'll take it."

"Ohhh… I don't have a cookie."

"Well then, what use are you to me?"

This might have felt cleverer if I'd still been facing him down, but by that time he was already walking away to his table, and I don't even know if he heard me, and it irked me greatly that he said something so grade-school insulty and then didn't even have the courtesy to follow up. Or give me a cookie.

I'm-a feelin': grumpy

Not much new to report from Movieland: I spent Friday's business hours mostly working in my hotel room, then saw three movies in the evening and scheduled an interview with the women who directed my favorite of that batch of films. Today, I had planned to take the morning for myself and have fun in New York, but I had a 10 a.m. interview with a director which was fascinating and took nearly an hour, and by the time I got down to Union Square and had looked around the farmers' market a bit, I realized there were festival films that aren't playing again during my time here, so I'd only get to see them if I got on it right away. So I went to one of the venues and spent the day theater-hopping there, watching five movies almost back to back. In two cases I had to skip the post-show Q&As and bolt out of the theater the second the credits started, in order to dash to a different theater.

Sadly, of the five films I saw today, I only really enjoyed two; one was a highly contrived, maudlin, artificial melodrama, and two of them had cute bits but were about such self-absorbed, aggressively unpleasant protagonists that I couldn't interest myself in their relationship dramas. The other two were great, though, and the last one in particular — a dark Norwegian thriller called Jackpot — was funny and very well made, and the director and one of the stars were hilarious at their Q&A afterward. I asked a plot question regarding the twist at the end, and the co-star said something to the effect of "Well, when we did that, we were hoping not to have viewers as sharp as you, who'd notice." Later, I asked another question, a follow-up to something the director said about having re-cut the film several times with different endings, and the co-star said "He even called me up at 3 a.m. at one point and said 'Maybe it's YOU, maybe YOU'RE the murderer!'" The director denied it, and seemed very flustered, and referred to me as "the difficult woman down front." They really cracked me up.

And geez, I need to get to bed. Depending on how I work it, I have a screening tomorrow at 9:30 or 10 a.m., and an interview at noon regardless, and another screening at 1, and I'm not getting enough sleep or enough New York. I literally went to see five minutes of an open mic tonight, traveling to the West Village just long enough to see someone best described as my brother-in-law-once-removed (brother of Cass' sister's husband) open for a comedy show. I wedged that between screenings, just ducking in, talking to him for five minutes, watching him tell jokes for five minutes, and walking out. This is no way to enjoy a city.

Here IS how to enjoy a city: At midnight, after my last screening, I came out to find that it was pouring. Fortunately, I"d been carrying a poncho around all day. So I walked back to my hotel, ducking into random delis and boutiques to see what kind of interesting stuff they had, since they all seemed to still be open. And upon getting back to my hotel at 12:30 a.m., I realized I still hadn't had an authentic New York slice of pizza. So I picked a direction, walked one block, and found a place that a) was still open and b) had gigantic chicken-and-bacon pizza slices, cheap. I love this town. But it wears me out.

I'm-a feelin': jazzed up

So the thing is, being on the streets of New York is like being in a movie, perhaps because there are so damn many movies about the streets of New York. But they still don't feel very real to me. Maybe because by the time I'd walked six blocks toward my hotel, I'd passed a guy walking down the street shouting randomly, something about "them fornicating, with they MEN" (I'm voting schizo, not Bluetooth). And a woman weeping hysterically and openly while trying to hail a cab. And a guy in tight red pants and a hot-pink T-shirt who looked like he was auditioning to be the new Austin Scarlett; he was walking with friends, and he had a battery-operated bubble gun, and they were walking in a cloud of bubbles. Also there was a woman dressed as a disco ball, handing out flyers. If they'd all suddenly burst into song and synchronized dance, I wouldn't have been that surprised, just disappointed that I didn't know the lyrics.

Anywho, I walked to the theater and saw a really striking indie debut-feature, the world premiere of a film called First Winter. And afterward I talked with the filmmaker and set up an interview for today. (Which he missed. Rescheduled for tomorrow.)

And then I went to the first-night reception, which was at the Apple Store on 14th, which is basically a three-story plexiglass cube designed to show off whatever's in it, which at this point was a really fancy party. For god's sake, the DJs were Just Blaze and Q-Tip. Nothing could make me feel more like I'm in a movie than DJs who just happen to be big celebrities. They were spinning on the top floor, which was hellishly crowded and hot. I milled around with a drink for a while and found no one to talk to — the film people all seemed to be there in big groups that clung together — so I went back down to the nearly deserted first-floor bar to talk to the nice guy who I'd conversed with when I got my first drink. The plan was to try the weird cocktail he and his bartending partner had whipped up, then go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

Two and a half hours later, I was one of the last people to leave the closed-down party.

Basically, I got into a conversation with the bartender, who was a really interesting, cute black dude with a giant mane of dredlocks and a great laugh. He's a local cinematographer who has films playing in town that aren't at Tribeca. And then I started talking to the woman working with him, a photographer from Australia who's interested in getting into poetry. The three of us spent half an hour just talking about Shel Silverstein, and Roald Dahl, and Jack Handey, and Edward Gorey, and other purveyors of sick-and-twisted humor. And when they ran off (to smoke a joint, implied the third bartender), I started talking to the security guy who was also hanging out at the bar, who was a 20-year transit cop married to an eight-year desk cop. He was remarkably philosophical about the things he'd seen and done in the line of duty; his feeling on being a cop — or doing anything else, really — is if you don't like it, move on. He doesn't understand the people who complain about how hard being police is. He was a remarkable and interesting man.

And then I got pigeonholed by a rather famous local film critic (I've since googled him, so I know he was who he was claiming to be, but I'm not going to out him) who was somewhat drunk and somewhat bored and basically launched with "I'm sick of talking about film, my whole life is talking about film, let's talk about something else. Here's something I ask people a lot, which one celebrity would you most want to have sex with?" Within 20 minutes, we were sitting together and asking each other remarkably personal questions about our sex lives and relationships. I'll give him this, he paid attention, and asked follow-up questions, and didn't hesitate to answer when I threw his questions back at him, and it was a strangely satisfying experience, to tell a total stranger things that my friends don't know about me, and hear his own stories in return.

And then I had to make it back to my hotel while more than a little drunk (having sampled honey vodka, jalapeno vodka, and chocolate-raspberry vodka, plus something involving macerated strawberries and mint, and something else involving peppercorns and bark) and with my phone out of juice. I'm pretty pleased with my navigational abilities, which got me back to the hotel without relying on cabs or asking directions. Also, I got into a lovely conversation while waiting for the train, with a very skinny bespectacled black dude who's a professor who moonlights as a bouncer. I told him I found that hard to believe with his build, but he said he basically just had to look stern and let his muscular buddy back him up. So odd! But he was a nice guy, and clearly quite tickled at my pickled cheer.

Today's just been about working, but now I'm taking off for what will hopefully, if timing permits, be a series of films in the same venue. There's another huge party tonight, but I'm likely going to skip it in the name of sleep. Saturday and Sunday could potentially be all-day filmfests, if I can make the schedule work. Though if I can't watch all the movies, I'm fine with living out one instead. Off to adventure!

Well, yesterday was certainly a day. I'm in New York City to cover the Tribeca film festival as planned, but I spent most of yesterday feeling like I was in a movie. The genre ranged from boring indie mumblecore to thriller to rom-com, so it added up to one of those movies mostly just cassielsander likes, the ones where the critics say "It didn't know what kind of film it wanted to be." Also, it could have used more spaceships or explosions or something, though preferably neither of them too close to me. (Hm. Maybe there were spaceships and explosions, just so far from me that I didn't notice them. In fact, if you count the touring space shuttle as a spaceship, there definitely were such things in the world somewhere yesterday.)

The plan for yesterday was 1) Fly to New York 2) Take a shuttle to my hotel, check in, ditch my luggage, do some work 3) Walk down to the Tribeca press office for my credentials 4) See a couple of movies, go to the first-night reception, go back to the hotel.

Instead, what happened was that the second leg of my flight was delayed by hours, which I spent sitting and sighing and reading and fuming at the airport, like everyone else. (Boring indie realistic mumblecore film!) So by the time I got to New York and got the shuttle, rush hour was starting, and it looked like I wasn't going to make it to the press office by the time it closed. Which would mean I couldn't see the movies or go to the reception, and I basically would have blown my first night entirely. I'll give the shuttle driver this: He drove like a nutcase from JFK to Manhattan, jerking off the freeway at every exit and jerking back on at the next one, keeping us moving when nothing else was moving, and squeezing between vehicles with so little clearance, I felt forced to inhale sharply every time he did it. He drove without care of life, limb, or the law, and I blessed him for it; everything he was doing seemed overblown and ridiculous and unreal to me. (Comedy adventure film!)

But then we got to midtown and he headed north to drop other people off, and at that point it was 5:30. So I jumped ship, giant luggage in tow, and started trying to hail a cab to take me in the right direction. I never would have thought I'd have trouble getting a cab in New York, but given that I had a giant roller bag with me, the only cabs that stopped were the ones who wanted to take me back to the airport. Two different guys pulled up, then shook their heads and pulled off when they heard I just wanted to go downtown. I ended up walking half a mile toward the office, just to be moving while I tried to flag a cab. Eventually, a guy in a luxury sedan said "You're trying to get a cab?" When I explained where I was going, he said "Hop in!" I told him I needed to, at that point, go from 54th street to 18th street in less than 20 minutes. He laughed and said "You pay me well, I get you there. Hey, you DON'T pay me well, I STILL get you there!" Then he also drove like a madman, which made for a nice cooling breeze coming though the open window, particularly given that I was sweaty from hauling that suitcase around. So there I was, sitting in the back of this sleek black luxury car, tearing through the streets of New York at illegal speeds, squeezing between careening busses and other insane cab drivers and some kind of gigantic many-firetruck/many-police car emergency. (Action thriller!)

Did I mention that as soon as I landed at JFK and turned on my phone, I got an urgent message saying that the Chicago office needed a file only I had, which I'd neglected to put on the server somehow? I got to the press office and got my credentials and had exactly enough time to sit down, log in to their wifi, and send the file (which felt like sending the missile-deactivation codes 15 seconds before the missiles explode) before the office closed and I got kicked out. (Action thriller continues!)

At that point, I'd already missed my window for most of the first round of Tribeca films, especially once I walked back to my hotel and checked in and changed. So I took some downtime to explore the neighborhood and check out some of the local delis and buy some sandwiches and generally not be in a movie. Except… well, to be continued. (Cheesy ’30s serial!)

I'm-a feelin': busy

Two things are happening in the next two weeks. I'm going to New York tomorrow to live in a hotel for a week and cover the Tribeca film fest while also trying to more or less work full time. And the day I get back, my sister flies into town. So we've been talking a lot more via email lately, mostly about coordinating our plans to watch the usual run of bad movies:

Me: I'm already worried that all the New Yorkers will laugh at my Midwestern wardrobe.

Tara: As long as they don't stab you, you should consider yourself lucky.

Me: Now I'm all worried that all the New Yorkers will stab me and get blood all over my Midwestern wardrobe!

Tara: I didn't say that to make you worry, I just wanted you to try harder to avoid being stabbed. You've been to New York before, right? How many times did you get stabbed that time you were there?

Me: Eight. I didn't want to say anything because I know how you worry. Also, I wasn't trying to launch a rap career at the time, so there didn't seem to be any point to publicizing it.

Tara: A fun game would be to try to get stabbed fewer times during this visit. That should keep you entertained while you are in super-boring New York.

---

Me: I saw that Snow White movie Mirror Mirror.

Tara: That looks unbelievably bad. And I don't mean awesome-bad like the movies I want to see, I mean just terrible-bad.

Me: It wasn't bad unless you HATE HATE HATE Julia Roberts, which some people clearly do, and I don't know why.

Tara: Julia Roberts murdered my family.

Me: As part of your family, and as someone in touch with the rest of your family, I find your story a tiny bit difficult to believe.

Tara: You are actually my second family that I picked up to replace the family that was murdered by Julia Roberts. I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but you JUST WOULDN'T LEAVE IT ALONE!

Me: Wait, where did you get an entire new family from?

Tara: Cut-Rate-Families-R-Us.

Me: I refuse to believe we're a cut-rate family, given what a high-quality family we are. Are you sure you don't mean Luxury Expensive Families Boutique?

Tara: Nope. And I just went through the drive-thru and ordered a 3-pack family because I was in a big hurry.

Me: Wait, did they say "Want to super-size that for 29 cents" and you said yes and that's why we're all fat? Is that your fault?

Tara: But you practically lose money by not super-sizing! All that extra stuff for so little money!

Me: And why didn't Julia Roberts get you, too?

Tara: Because I'm wily.

Me: Sure, but wilier than a Julia Roberts? I think not. They can smell fear and work-related boredom.

Tara: Yeah, but she's tottering around on 4-inch heels, so she doesn't go very fast.

Me: Why did she kill your first family, anyway?

Tara: She sacrificed them to Satan to get that Oscar for Erin Brockovich. How else could she have won?

Me: This explains so much. As a member of your current family, I hope she doesn't want any more Oscars.

Tara: Of course she does. Why do you think she stabbed you eight times when you were in New York!?!

I'm-a feelin': silly

aizuchi and komainu came to town for the weekend, for the C2E2 comics expo. And along the way, A. brought up the webcomic Oglaf, which I'd never seen before. I promptly read the whole thing — presumably years of backlog, since it only updates once a week. It's beautifully drawn and deeply weird and frequently very, very pornographic. (The very first strip involves a "cumsprite," summoned by a sorceress to tattle on her masturbating apprentice.) There are story arcs and repeat characters and ongoing arcs, but some of my favorite stuff is the one-offs. Here are a few of my favorites that are safe for work:

Labyrinths! and also…

Scheherazade …and in addition…

Baby Trap

These particular strips all tie into folklore in a way that hits my sweet spot for myth and amuses me greatly; the larger arcs show some of the same sensibility, often with a rougher sense of humor and a hints of a big, rather random, sometimes creepy world out there. The sex is impressively inclusive, with gay and straight stuff appearing in equal measure and shown as equally sexy, but it's all often treated for comic value as much as anything else. It reminds me a bit of Phil Foglio's Xxxenophile in that way.

So, highly recommended, with the understanding that there are lots of body parts and boinking and gags that often involve both. Here's one of my favorites among the NSFW ones, if you need to know what you're getting into.

And if you want to dodge the NSFW ones — or hell, focus exclusively on those — the archive designates which is which, often in funny terms like "a bit sweary" and "not as dirty as the Jim Henson version" and "there are dirtier Garfield." I hope y'all enjoy these as much as I did.

I'm-a feelin': cheerful

Okay, remember when I posted back in October about our group sojourn down to the City Museum in St. Louis for a day of climbing around an adult-sized, multi-story jungle gym and going down 10-story spiral slides and playing in the grown-up-scale ball pit and so forth and so on? And a whole bunch of people said "Oh, I want to go!" and I said "Tell you what, I'll organize a big ol' trip next May."

Big ol' trip: CONFIRMED. We're going back to the City Museum the weekend of May 19-20.

Here's the general plan for those of us going from Chicago. (Nine people last I counted, but I haven't sent the invite out wide yet.) We'll drive down Saturday morning, in several cars and at our own pace. Spend some time seeing the city, maybe visiting the Arch and the waterside park, or other parts of the city as interest warrants. This will be pretty a la carte.

Some of us will be staying at the Drury Hotel at the Arch (there are two Drury Hotels, equidistant from the museum). That place has some interesting amenities, like a free happy-hour buffet, which sounds like a good place for a general meetup of people coming in from out of town who want to mingle and meet each other.

Then those of us who have already been to the Museum will go Saturday afternoon/evening/night. It's open til midnight on weekends, and after 10 p.m., they turn off the lights, hand out flashlights, and let you explore in the dark. Those of you that haven't, though, I'd suggest making a day of it, because there's a LOT to explore.

Sunday will likely be a free day — potentially more Museum for those who didn't get enough, or more of the city, or maybe we'll just all spend all day Saturday at the museum and do the city Monday… we'll work out the details when we get closer. This is a save-the-date-and-start-making-plans initial post.

So, want to join us? Want to climb from a small airplane into a jungle gym through a metal-mesh tube three stories off the ground? Want to explore a giant cave full of monster faces and dinosaur statues? Want to crawl into random tunnels everywhere just to see where they go? Want to hang out with me in the dark? C'mon along! Who's in?

I'm-a feelin': excited

We're missing some editors and our web producer and our newswire specialist today. And I lost a couple of hours this morning to interviewing Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman Animation and director of the upcoming The Pirates!: Band Of Misfits, based on the Gideon Dafoe book The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists. (Lord was charming, it was a lovely interview, and I got to see some of the models used for the film.)

So we're even more frantic than usual with churning through the content and wearing many hats and doing all the things other people normally do, like researching news and editing newswire pieces and finding photos and posting content, and I'm actually so stressed, I'm getting dizzy.

Which is why brooksmarlin is my hero, for developing this site out of nowhere, as a joke, based on a random conversational thread on Twitter: Calming Manatee. I feel better already.

I'm-a feelin': stressed

For those who asked, these are the COOL-ASS BOOTS WITH BUCKLES AND SHIT I was wearing on the el when the drunk couple got all excited. I have them in the black:



Yes, they have no buckles whatsoever. He meant "buttons." You would think such a dedicated fashion critic would know the difference! But drunk people? Not always the most cogent people. But they are sometimes the most complimentary people. They will apparently even compliment things you aren't wearing.

I'm-a feelin': weary

This apparently just isn’t my week for drunk people on the el.

Last night I was coming home late from a particularly intense gaming session with people magdalene1 introduced me to, and the el was crammed with post-game Cubs fans in various states of energy. I took the only seat, opposite a couple I’d put in their late 20s. He was wearing camo pants and a matching camo baseball cap, and clutching an open PBR tallboy. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and had grubby, lank hair and was hunched around something in plastic in her lap. And they were carrying on a pretty ordinary conversation, but REALLY REALLY LOUD. They kept asking people around them for clarifications about the directions they had — they were apparently going to Kenosha, but knew nothing about the el or the Metra train they were hooking up with, and were just guessing. They were also arguing about which of them had drunk more that night, and they kept asking people around them where they were going. Everyone they talked to answered with that reluctant “Don't want to engage” tone of tired, sober people dealing with loud, unpredictable drunks.

And then I blew my nose. More fool I.

Him: OH HOLY SHIT! YOU REALLY BLEW THE HELL OUT OF THAT THING! OH MY GOD!

Her: HONEY, THAT’S RUDE! MAYBE SHE DOESN’T WANT YOU POINTING THAT OUT?

Him: WHAT? WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT? SHE TOTALLY BLEW THE SHIT OUT OF HER NOSE!

Her: YEAH, BUT MAYBE SHE DOESN’T WANT PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THAT? HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF SOMEONE DID THAT TO YOU? WOULDN’T YOU FEEL BAD?

Him: WELL, I DIDN’T FEEL BAD BEFORE, BUT I KINDA DO NOW!

Her: WELL, MAYBE YOU SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO HER!

Him: I DIDN’T WANT TO BE MEAN TO HER! SHE SEEMS NICE! I LIKE HER BOOTS! THOSE ARE SOME GREAT BOOTS! AND HER BACKPACK, THAT’S COOL AS SHIT! THAT’S A GREAT BACKPACK!

Her: WELL, I LIKE HER DRESS! IT’S A NICE DRESS! BUT THE BOOTS ARE GOOD TOO! THE BOOTS GO WITH THE DRESS! IT’S A NICE OUTFIT!

Him: HER BOOTS ARE WAY BETTER THAN MY OLD BOOTS! LOOK AT ALL THOSE BUCKLES AND SHIT!

Her: AW, HONEY, I LIKE YOUR OLD BOOTS!

Him: I LIKE ‘EM TOO, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS THEM BOOTS! THEM ARE SOME COOL-ASS BOOTS IS ALL I’M SAYING! BUT MAYBE SHE DOESN’T WANT ME TO TALK ABOUT HER BOOTS! SHE LOOKS LIKE SHE DOESN’T WANT TO TALK TO ME AT ALL!

Her: MAYBE SHE DOESN’T LIKE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT HER BOOTS! OR MAYBE SHE’S JUST MAD AT YOU BECAUSE YOU MADE FUN OF HER NOSE!

Him: I WASN’T MAKING FUN OF HER NOSE, I JUST SAID SHE BLEW THE HOLY FUCK OUT OF IT IS ALL!

Her: WELL, THAT WAS RUDE!

Him: I SAID I FELT BAD ALREADY! HEY LOOK, SHE GOT A BOTTLE OF SMARTWATER! REMEMBER THAT BOTTLE OF SMARTWATER I BOUGHT? TASTED JUST LIKE REGULAR WATER. DAMN, THAT WAS STUPID!

And then they went around a few more times about that, and then he tried to get another beer out of her — turns out the thing in her lap was a six-pack of PBR, minus the can he’d just finished — and she said no, that was HER beer. And about this time, a bunch of people got off the train, including my seatmate, and I moved out of their line of sight. Because I was just not in the mood.

But hey, at least they were positive drunks. I’ve never had my sartorial choices analyzed by drunks before, and I’ve never been so thoroughly complimented by loud random strangers. I guess I can’t fault their tastes. (Except in beer, and camo gear.) But damn, I wish they’d come with a volume knob.

I'm-a feelin': distressed

Oh, one addition to last night: Once our merry wanderer of the night lost me and I headed home, I passed the alley she'd disappeared into and tripped in. It was between a featureless brick building and an apartment building with a house-style porch in front, and a bay window. I could see people inside, so I went down the alley, with the vague idea that there might be an obvious back door I could knock on. If her friends really had turned her away, maybe they'd change their minds if they knew she was staggering around in the streets, trying to get a ride to anywhere from anyone.

But once I got in back, there was just a stairwell to a series of doors, and no clues as to which one she'd tried – or even if she had the right alley in the first place. I gave it up and came out on the other side of the building, since it was a block nearer to where I was ultimately going.

Trouble was that it was a block closer to home, but within a back alley. I got a couple more blocks before realizing I was further from home than I thought — I'd expected to come out on my street after a block — and that there were fewer and fewer lights on in the area I was entering. At some point, I realized I was headed into a completely lightless area, where I could just make out the black open maw of a doorway and the bars across the black open rectangles that constituted the windows of a parking garage. I thought "This is no place for someone who just saw Cabin In The Woods to be standing alone at night in the dark."

And then someone's back-yard security light went on, and I could see that the black open doorway was just a security door, and there was no one (or thing) in the black windows. And by the time I got up to the parking garage (where the alley ended and I had to turn back to the street, but now four blocks closer to home) a car had pulled up, and I could see the area clearly by its lights. I was not eaten by the eels at this time.

So yeah. Two pieces of advice: If you have any interest in, or feeling for, schlocky horror movies (either of the classic Friday The 13th type or the modern Shark Night 3D), see Cabin In The Woods. DO NOT READ REVIEWS OR ANYTHING ABOUT IT FIRST, there are far too many things to spoil. And then afterward? Don't wander into unlit, unfamiliar alleys at night.

I'm-a feelin': tired

Warning: This story does not end well, or in a satisfying or amusing fashion.

So I saw Cabin In The Woods tonight, and then took the train home. We live near the first stop on the Purple Line, one stop north of the junction where the Red Line ends. As I was getting off the Red and onto the Purple, someone yelled into our train that we were all bullshit cunts, or something like that. At the last second as the doors were closing, she jumped onto the train and started doing a moony, blissed-out dance, with her eyes closed and her face turned upward. Everyone politely ignored her.

But when I got off at my stop, she also got off. She was a skinny little white girl, well dressed, with trendy glasses and a cute shag haircut and stylish tight layered clothes and furry boots that might have been Uggs, for all I know. Also a jean jacket and a tiny little club purse clutched in her arms. She looked like a young college student. She promptly staggered against me and pointed out that people are bullshit, she fucking hates people, except for me. Then she said "Hold me while I pee, okay?"

Well… no. I told her she shouldn't pee on the platform, she'd fall off. I tried to get her to come down the stairs to ground level with me, and she obediently lurched in the right direction, but as we got to the doors to the stairs, she thrust her jacket into my arms and said "Just hold this," and went around to the side of the stairwell to squat and pee. I seriously debated gently hanging her coat on one of the nearby signs and going the hell home. But given that she clearly had no sense of balance left, I was afraid she'd fall down the stairs and hurt herself. So I obediently waited.

And then, of course, I was her best friend. I suspect a mix of drink and drugs, because she wasn't slurring at all, but nothing coming out of her mouth made any linear sense, and she kept repeating herself, primarily telling me "You're so cute," and "You're so nice," and "I'm kinda fucked-up, right?" and "It's okay, I gotcha," as she clutched me to keep from falling over. She would also periodically yell random things about people being bullshit, and something about a stupid little cunt, or a total pussy. And she kept gesturing up at the train tracks and saying something about being safer on tracks side of the fence, and wanting to climb up there. Initially, we were going the same way, and I just walked alongside her as she rambled and ranted and periodically bumped into me.

Then our paths parted ways, but when I turned to head toward home, she walked right out into the street without looking or pausing, and when she realized I wasn't with her, she stood in the middle of the street and made "C'mon, c'mon!" gestures at me. She kept saying "It's just over here," and "It's not far." At that point, I have no idea whether she wanted company or a guardian or she still thought I was her best friend or what, but I figured it'd be nice to make sure she got safely wherever she was going, since she seemed very capable of hurting herself. She kept accidentally falling into shrubs, or taking random swings at signs and trees.

So I caught up with her and asked if she knew where she was heading. She assured me she was just going to Grace. There's no Grace street in our neighborhood. She said "It's just right here," and took my arm. So we walked arm in arm for a while. She really seemed to know where she was going. I was still in "This is ridiculous, but it'll make a funny story" mode. She told me another half-dozen times that I was nice, and cute, and that she hated people, and a bunch of other things that didn't make sense. I tried to actually talk to her, to get some information about where she was staying and whether she was okay, but her answers made no sense — like, I asked "Where were you earlier tonight?" and she said "I was agnostic!" like it was an answer. Then she gestured at a house we were passing and said they were agnostics too, and since I was like that, I owned her, or owed her, I wasn't sure which. She also told me with great sincerity, a story that made no sense but involved her owing someone some weed, but not having the weed or she would smoke up with me for sure. Or maybe someone owed her the weed?

We eventually got to an alley between houses, and she said "I'm just gonna go in here for a minute, hang on," and disappeared. I heard her fall heavily, and I asked if she was all right, and she said, rather shakily, that she was fine. Several minutes passed, and I debated again just going home. Especially when it occurred to me that she might just be buying drugs on her way to her next stop. Especially when she came out from behind another building at the end of the block and said we could go now. She started heading back to the train station. I asked if we were putting her back on the train, and she said yes, she was trying to get to Racine. Which is a north/south street in Chicago, which didn't help much in terms of getting her onto a train or into a cab.

Then she started walking out into the middle of the street and trying to flag down cars, and informing them they were bullshit cunts when they didn't stop. She complained to me that people were bullshit because she wanted a ride. I said "You aren't going to be able to get someone to drive you down to Chicago. Do you want to go back to the train?" She walked back out into the street, nearly in front of a car. Then she just wandered off.

It was at this point that I realized she had no idea what she was doing, and that she was going to try to get into a car with a total stranger, and that I really shouldn't let that happen. But she was either ready to be done with me or had forgotten me, because she lurched off randomly. I followed her for quite a while as she pretty much retraced the mile-long loop around the neighborhood that we'd already walked, and I worried about what to do. If I'd been able to get an address out of her, I would have just driven her home, but I had no confidence she knew where she was going. At one point, she walked up to a guy getting in his pickup truck, and said "I want to go wherever you're going. Can I go with you?" Thank god, he said no, and drove off, leaving her staggering around in the middle of the street, swearing and ranting.

So at that point, I reluctantly called the police. I couldn't follow her around all night, I couldn't get anything useful out of her, and I couldn't abandon her to keep trying to get into men's cars, because that wasn't likely to go anywhere good for her. The dispatcher seemed pretty nonplussed, but said he'd send a car around. She kept walking. I kept following her. Finally, she stopped and I caught up, and waited, watching for the cops. She might have been a little soberer at that point; at least, she actually made eye contact and talked to me for a few minutes. I asked if she had any idea where she was going; she said Racine. "Up by Kenosha."

She meant Racine, Wisconsin. Which is roughly 60 miles north of us.

I said "You live in WISCONSIN? What are you doing here?" She said "My friends left me. They're bullshit." I said "They ditched you in Chicago? Do you know anyone in the area? Anyone you could stay with for the night?" She made a vague gesture back toward the alley she'd gone into, and said a bunch of incoherent things, but I think there might have been some people there who she'd hoped to crash with who had turned her away, or hadn't been home. If she even had the right alley.

Then a cab pulled up, and asked if we were waiting for a cab. I'm only now wondering whether that was a coincidence, or the cops had just sent a cab to our last known location and trusted that would do the trick. It was a small residential neighborhood street, not exactly good cab-cruising territory. She looked at me and said "Can we get in that? Together?" And honestly, I might have done it, except I had no cash on me, and I presumed she didn't or she would have just taken it, and I still didn't believe she knew where she was going. And I kept hoping the police would show up. The last time I called the police in Evanston — when a car plowed into a line of parked cars six feet in front of me — the first patrol car was there within 30 seconds. It was eerie. That did not happen this time. Which was pretty frustrating, because we actually stood still in the same spot for several minutes. We were the only people on the street. We wouldn't have been hard to find.

I talked to her a little more — she said something about how if she didn't do something-something, her grandfather would find her. I asked where her grandfather lived, and she said Racine. Then she ran off. We were near the Firehouse pub at that point, and she ran into the parking lot opposite it, which dead-ends onto a construction site six or eight feet above sidewalk level. I called after her that it was a dead-end, but she ignored me or didn't hear me, and at that point I was tired and fed up. I followed at a distance, but when she got to the construction, she apparently crawled up a pile of gravel, went over a wall, and slid down to ground level — I saw her in silhouette go up and over — and then I could see her running south along Chicago from there. There was no way I was going to catch up with her, so I called the police again, updated them on her whereabouts, and went home.

I'm deeply frustrated about the whole thing. Apart from calling the police, I don't know what you can do about someone who's drugged out of her mind and doing various things that are likely to get her raped and dumped, or run over. But calling them didn't help, and I didn't have the capacity to help her myself, and I will never have any idea whether she found some friends or slept it off in a park somewhere, or found someone else to help her, or walked out into the street and got hit by a car, or got picked up by the police elsewhere for peeing in public or calling some random passerby a cunt. I'm too much of a story fiend. I want to know what brought her to that pass, and whether she made it through the night and found her way home. I want to know whether she learns anything from the experience and stops messing with drugs, or continues to overdo it and seriously fucks up her life, or just eventually grows up and looks back on all this as that era when she did dumb things. I want to know whether she's okay. Dammit.

I'm-a feelin': exhausted

I think someone's been beating me with sticks in my sleep again. I hurt all over.

Some of this has to do with flagrantly overdoing everything yesterday. I overdid it at the gym because I've been underdoing it lately. We drove out to the burbs to have Easter dinner with Cass' family at a German restaurant, and we both ate way too much meat and potatoes, those being about the only option at a German restaurant. Then I came home and cleaned for a few hours, then went on a 90-minute walk with Chris around the neighborhood. After that much exercise, I slept like a bunch of rocks.

But I had horrible zombie nightmares, and I woke up clenched into a tight ball. When Cass got up in the morning and I stretched out across the whole bed, I felt like a wad of paper being uncrumpled and smoothed out flat. And I've spent the morning hobbling stiffly around the office, the usual result of a lot of walking followed by a lot of sitting still.

Walking back from my afternoon screening helped me loosen up a bit, though. And while it's been a frustratingly rushed day, with way too much on my plate, I saw a terrific Lebanese film this afternoon (doesn't come to Chicago until May, unfortunately), and I'm finally seeing Cabin In The Woods tonight after missing an earlier screening.

This week is full past capacity, with plans every night, plus C2E2 and aizuchi and komainu for the weekend. I'm going to be on a panel Saturday morning at C2E2 that I haven't really started preparing for. Next week I'm flying to New York for a week to cover the Tribeca Film Festival. I'm tireder thinking of all of it than I was when I woke up crumpled this morning, but at the same time, it's all going to be very, very exciting.

I'm-a feelin': stiff

Just randomly thought about this picture last night, for the first time since I took it: This was a sign by the pool at the resort we stayed at in the Bahamas in February.



I'm sure the image with the adult and child holding hands is meant to convey "No unattended children," but it really looks like "Don't bring your other kid," or possibly "Only bring your favorite kid." Or really, "It is better to have one child only," à la the Chinese overpopulation-reduction campaign:

I'm-a feelin': amused

Cass: I give you kisses now. Because you deserve them.

Me: I'm not sure I believe anyone deserves anything.

Cass: Some people deserve a swift kick in the pants.

Me: I'm not sure I believe anyone deserves anything good.

Cass: Some people deserve a good swift kick in the pants.

Me: Okay, fair.

I'm-a feelin': giggly

Hey, anybody besides me in the Chicago area into Dead Can Dance? As of 10 a.m., tickets went on sale for their only Midwest appearance this tour, at the Pritzker Pavilion on August 21. Lawn tickets are less than $20, and you get to sit on the lawn and have a picnic. (There are better tickets, too, but I've always found the seats at the Pritzker somewhat uncomfortable, and much less fun and communal.) Anyone want to come with me and sit on the lawn and hear beautiful lush music in late summer?

Tickets are on sale here while they last.

I'm-a feelin': pleased

Doing research, research, research today — I'm interviewing Brad Bird in about an hour. He's one of my favorite writer-directors: the "Family Dog" episode of Amazing Stories, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. My interview prep usually involves reading lots and lots and lots of other interviews, to avoid repetition and find the good topics. Which is how I ran across this, in response to how Bird developed his characters for The Incredibles:

Bird: When I first started toying around with the idea, I tried to come up with brand-new powers for the characters, and I realized very quickly that all of them had been done unless they were stupid, like, “He drools on people.” The comic-book superhero genre is so vast and so sort of trodden-over that some guy out there could have self-published a hundred issues in Omaha. Someone, somewhere had done just about everything with powers. Just as quickly as I realized all the powers had been done, I also realized that I wasn’t that interested in them. I was interested in how it interfaced with family or having a life and getting up in the morning. And then very quickly I said, “Well, if you were to have powers based on family members and their position in the family” then that would be a very interesting way to get into the movie: Dads are supposed to be strong, so I made him strong; mothers are supposed to be infinitely flexible, so I made her infinitely flexible; teenage girls are insecure and a little defensive, so I had her be invisible and gave her force fields; 10-year-old boys are energy balls and race everywhere, so I made him super fast; and babies are unknowns, they could be the next president of the United States or a bum — or both.

In retrospect, that's amazingly obvious, and it fits neatly with the film as it's executed. But it never reached the level of conscious thinking for me. I love learning things like this about my favorite pop-culture — simple enough ideas that make me see things in an entirely new light. Go, L.A. Times interviewer.

I'm-a feelin': pleased

Went to the townhome meeting, as everyone who commented advised me to do. It was distressing and depressing and dull — it would have just been dull, but then one latecomer went on and on and on with gossip and accusations and bile about a family that wasn't there, and eventually he picked a fight with another resident over the details of some of the gossip (which he totally knows is true because someone else told him she saw something when she was spying on the family from her window), and everyone else just sat there awkwardly. I wonder what the rally was like. But at least it was a short walk back to our place afterward.

Two things I can recommend, based on this weekend:

1) D'Candela Peruvian restaurant. Eight of us went on Saturday night; none of us had tried it before. We wound up curious about so many things that we ordered six entreés (including a whole rotisserie chicken with sides of fried plantains and fried yucca root), four appetizers, and some drinks, including chicha morada, which is a sweet, fruity, cinnamon-y juice made from purple corn. It was a tremendous amount of food. Total cost per person: $16. Everyone wanted to go again. While everything I tried ranged from good to incredible, family-style was the way to go here; enough of the food was rich but simple in flavor that it was definitely better to try a wide variety of things rather than eating a plate of one thing.

2) Trying everything once. In this case, it was a boxing tournament; I got free tickets from work, and invited a bunch of people, always with the acknowledgement that none of us were particularly into boxing, or dying to see some boxing, but all of us were vaguely curious, and willing to try it once. (Yes, this involved violating my no planning during Lent rule. I was irked and reluctant, but it was a special occasion.) And it turned out to be really interesting! It was the last day of six days of matches, held in a high-school gym, so we got to sit high in the bleachers and watch not just a series of boxing matches, but the people who came to see boxing matches. There were lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight fights, and a couple of matches between women. (The last one we watched was brutal — neither of the boxers were much for blocking, and they both just smashed each other in the face over and over.) It was fascinating to see the different fighting styles, the people who relied on dancing or dodging or clinching vs. the people who just hit hard and fast. We saw a couple of people drop, dazed from the pummeling. We saw a couple of matches close enough that we couldn't tell who won until it was declared. And we saw a couple of huge, muscular dudes moving fast enough that we could barely follow the action. I'm not in a hurry to see more boxing meets, but I'm glad we went to this one. Try anything once, and the fun things twice. Especially if they come with rotisserie chicken and yucca root. Mmmm.

I'm-a feelin': sleepy

I have a weird choice to make tonight. Tonight there's a meeting of our townhome association, which only gets together a few times a year. There's also a vigil for Trayvon Martin downtown. And I'm actually torn.

I feel more strongly about the vigil, by far. It seems awfully likely that Trayvon Martin was murdered, and that race, class, and a bad law played a part in the lack of investigation and prosecution that's followed so far. The rallies are peacefully supporting his family, and pointedly suggesting that offering a lower standard of societal protection for black males than for white males is unacceptable, and that the citizenry objects. It's about reminding states and politicians that this kind of thing can't be permitted, and won't be ignored.

By contrast, the townhome association meetings generally deal with burning issues like who hasn't paid their annual dues, and when or whether we should get the sewer lines rodded out again.

On the other hand, the townhome meetings are small and personal. They represent some of the only bonding we do with our neighbors. They let people air grievances and keep each other up to date on neighborhood events and problems. They let us defuse the kind of tensions that arise from people who live in close proximity but don't speak to each other much. They're a necessary and helpful social bonding. And my presence as an individual there among maybe a dozen other individuals at most will make a difference, whereas I'll just be one among thousands at the vigil.

Either way, it's more about making a statement with my attendance than anything else. And either way, I feel like I'm making an equal statement with my non-attendance: "I don't care about this." Which isn't true in either case. It's more important at the vigil, and more likely to be noticed and to be significant at the meeting.

Oh, I don't know. Complicating all this is the fact that the vigil is outside and it's gotten unpleasantly cold again, and the alternate fact our townhome meetings are usually kind of depressing forums for malicious griping and gossiping, and I'm feeling physically battered after spending much of yesterday doing heavy-duty cleaning and gardening. I'd rather just go home and curl up on the couch than attend EITHER event. But that also sends a message, which is "I'm a lazy schlub." What do you think? Vigil, or association meeting?

I'm-a feelin': divided

Earlier this week, a Captain Awkward comment referenced the website The Art Of Manliness, in a positive light, and I was briefly taken aback, because it sounded so much like one of the sites Man Boobz would make fun of, the kind of misogynistic blither that disguises itself as being about achieving your true maleness. So I went and read some of the essays there, which cover a wide gamut of random topics, to the point of seeming a little distracted.

But this is the one that latched onto me, as opposed to me latching onto it: 4 Basic Life Lessons From Basic Training, in which a military vet tries to apply his training to the real world, with somewhat extreme results. Because one of the things he says is, in basic training, you have to haul your gear all over the place on your back, so you don't keep anything you don't need and don't use regularly. Here's how he applies that to real life:

Take an inventory of everything you use, and donate or sell everything that hasn’t been useful in the last four months. How do you decide what stays and what goes? Do what I do. Twice a year, turn everything you own backwards. When you look in the dresser drawer, you’ll see the backs of your shirts; in the cabinet you’ll see the back of the peanut butter jar. Then, when you use an item, turn it back around so it’s facing you. If you don’t use it, leave it alone. After four months, everything that is still facing away from you is donated or sold… no questions asked.

I am trying to imagine how spartan our home would look if we got rid of everything we hadn't used in the last four months. It'd be an interesting discipline in terms of pushing us to use dried goods that have been in the kitchen forever, or wear clothes we don't get to because we return to our favorites whenever they're clean, or even just to play with the various videogame systems we have that don't necessarily get a regular workout. It might push us to clean out the closets and the various drawers full of random accumulated crap.

But it'd also mean getting rid of most of our DVD and book collections, and a lot of things we keep for special occasions — I'm sure we've gone four months at a time without using our wineglasses, for instance, but I'm always glad we have them when someone brings wine to one of our gatherings. I wonder how he deals with seasonal clothing, since I don't wear shorts during the winter or coats during the summer, but wouldn't want to start over from scratch every season.

And once in a long while, something that hasn't been touched in a really long time comes in handy. Last month, I interviewed Ewan McGregor. That interview had to be done over the phone over the weekend, which meant I needed to dig up the phone-jack cord that's compatible with our home phones instead of the one compatible with our multi-line work phones. I don't normally do interviews at home anymore, and I probably hadn't used that cord in four years, but I'm glad I didn't have to go out and buy a new one just for this interview.

That all said, I'm sure there's a happy balance between his extreme application of the lifestyle and where I'm at currently. It's more interesting to me as a thought experiment than anything else. Looking around our house and wondering how many things in it I've actually used in the last four months, and how many things I wouldn't miss — or even notice — if they quietly disappeared in the night. I'm about to do a major closet-purge, to put away some of the heavy winter sweaters (ensuring that it'll get cold again right away) and get rid of some of the things I haven't worn in longer than the seasonal change could justify, and to make room for the new clothes I bought in Florida. The four-month thing might be an incentive to be a little more aggressive with that than usual.

I'm-a feelin': thoughtful

Me: Do you have eight oranges on your desk, all in separate baggies?

Editor Josh: No, no. These are apples, these are oranges. They're in separate bags so they don't corrupt each other.

Me: Well, they all look alike. In fact… I'm gonna COMPARE them!

Editor Josh: Well… that wouldn't be an apt comparison.

Me: Yeah, I know. It'd be like… Huh.

Editor Josh: Uh… like comparing…

Me: Y'know, two things…

Editor Josh: Different things…

Me: Like comparing sheep. With other things. That aren't much like sheep.

Editor Josh: Yes! Exactly like that. Comparatively.

---

It's been a pleasant morning. I finally made it back to the gym and finally got into the pool. I'm wearing a dress, and number of compliments on it now stands at 4. That said, it's always an adjustment when the weather gets nice and we start sleeping with the windows open and I wake up 20 times during the night and 30 times between 5 and 7 because of people moving around outside, or opening and shutting their front doors. Now I could really use a nap. Instead: Working like a madwoman this morning, then back-to-back screenings of Cabin In The Woods and The Hunger Games. It's gonna be a satisfying fangirl day.

I'm-a feelin': silly

Well! I began my work day with Scott Tobias informing me that I have not either been jet-skiing, I've merely been on a Waverunner, which is different because it's easier to get on one of those things than it is to get on a jet-ski. I guess I have been told! In exchange, I offer this snippet from a conversation with my parents yesterday:

Me: I tend to get into it a lot with Scott, because we have pretty different tastes in art. But it's frustrating sometimes, because he's often — 

Mom: Pedantic?

Dad: [Simultaneously.] Wrong?

Me: Ooh, I wasn't going to say either of those things, but I like the way you think. You both win.

---

Okay, two questions currently on my mind. 1) Do you have clothes that you like and are comfortable and flattering, but that you save for special occasions? Maybe this is a ridiculous question, I don't know. But as someone who never used to like wearing dresses unless I had to, I've usually had a couple of outfits that were only for formal occasions, in part because they were nicer than my usual clothes, but in larger part because they weren't as comfortable as my casual clothes, and I was never tempted to wear them unless I felt I had to. While I was in Florida I bought a bunch of summer dresses I love – cool, comfortable, flattering dresses — and I'm debating setting one or more of them aside for weddings or parties or whatever. And yet I'm kind of reluctant to not wear pretty clothes that I like. So I'm on the fence. How do people who actually wear dresses to work or to social events and whatnot generally deal with this?

and 2) Do you know Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat well enough to sing along with it? There's a special simulcast event next Monday and again in April that's a movie version of Donny Osmond in Joseph being sent out to theaters with subtitles for sing-along purposes. This seems fairly awesome to me, because singing Joseph was something Cass and I used to do on long car trips. (Well, we'd start out strong and bog down somewhere around "Close Every Door" and come out staggering on the other side and never make it to "Any Dream Will Do." The sad/slow songs always lost us.) It was something random we had in common, because it was my first experience with live theater when I was a wee child, and I was in love with it and had the album and listened to it a billion times, whereas he worked tech on it in high school and saw it rehearsed a billion times, and we both had it memorized-ish. But I'm really wondering if it's actually known well enough to support a sing-along. I mean, it was a popular show and all, but can it really stand up there with The Sound Of Music and Little Shop Of Horrors for sing-along-ability? Is this something the world was clamoring for?

I'm-a feelin': curious

This is not an hour for a civilized person to be conscious, let alone doing something meaningful like packing and traveling. Blech.

Regardless, longtime rollick fans will no doubt be overjoyed to know I cracked the Banana Code. When I first arrived in Florida, I was once again mock-accosted (mockosted?) over eating A WHOLE BANANA. Then I went to the farmer's market and bought seven huge bananas for $2. Suddenly eating a WHOLE BANANA every day became a matter of moving product, and no more was said on the matter.

Now, God willin' and the creek don't rise, I'm about to head back to Chicago and take A WHOLE BANANA with me without incident. But that also may be because my parents are as bleary as I am, and wouldn't notice if I took one of the rental condo's couches with me, either.

I'm-a feelin': sleepy

Today I tried jet-skiing for the first time. That was pretty close to a blast, though Mom and I went riding on a double, and just before we got on, she told me about the last time she went jet-skiing with a friend, and she went too fast and ended up dumping them both into the ocean, and they had a hard time getting back on the thing. I love swimming and it was a beautiful day and I wouldn't have minded going too fast and dumping myself into the drink, but I was not about to be responsible for landing my 67-year-old mother in the ocean a mile offshore.

And past 20 mph, we'd start hydroplaning, and bouncing hard with every wavelet, and the jet-ski had a tendency to pull to the left and start tipping, and I didn't fully trust Mom to compensate. She flipped her kayak a few days ago because she started tipping and overcompensated, and I didn't want that to happen here. So I got up to 25 mph or so, but didn't dare exceed that with a passenger. At some point I'm going to have to try it on my own and see what those things can do when you really open them up. Still, it was a perfect day, and something new and exciting to try, and I'm hoping to do it again, possibly on Lake Michigan this summer.

It was a lovely day in general. We had lunch at Buffalo Chips, this ridiculous dive bar Dad loves for the Monday wings specials and Mom loves for the "half a rack of ribs as a side dish" option. Then we went back to the condo and just relaxed for a while, with them finally watching The Descendants, which I'd brought for them, and me watching Yojimbo. Then it was jet-skiing and swimming in the ocean and hanging out on the beach, and then there was clothes-shopping and getting ice cream at this cute little boutique called For Heavens Shake, and then back to the condo for grilled steak and corn and asparagus and watermelon — a perfect summer meal. We even managed to talk politics without getting into a fight, largely because my conservative Mom and liberal Dad are both as baffled by the Republican nominees this year as I am.

This has been the best Florida trip yet. The weather has been ideal. The conversations have been great. We've gotten a ridiculous amount of running around done. I've done an equally ridiculous amount of surprisingly easy, low-key shopping and I'm basically coming home with a summer wardrobe, so hopefully it'll continue to be summer-in-March in Chicago a little longer. So many dresses to try out! Weird that I'm heading from 85 degree weather down here to 80 degree weather up there — and disappointing that in spite of the lovely Chicago weather, the beaches won't be open for another couple of months. It's like Illinois doesn't realize it's turned into Florida. Which is really a pity, because Florida is fun.

I'm-a feelin': happy

Me: Look! Someone painted their manatee mailbox tangerine orange!

Mom: I do NOT approve. Manatees are not meant to be orange. You know that.

[Two minutes later.]

Mom: Look, that guy's taking his boat through the car wash!

Me: Well, I don't approve. It's a car wash, not a BOAT wash.

Mom: Well, it's clearly a boat wash NOW.

Me: Because he took his boat into it? Well, by that logic, now that someone's painted their manatee orange, manatees get to be orange. They can be orange-atees.

Mom: Well, there you go then.

Today, we went to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary — my parents' favorite Florida destination — for a "short drop-in" that turned out to be around three hours of wandering around looking at alligators, turtles, one juvenile raccoon that obliviously came within a foot of us, and pretty much endless birds, including the sanctuary's famous painted buntings. Then we drove to Marco Island to look around and eat at the ridiculously popular Snook Inn, which was a multi-hour process of hanging out at the outdoor bar waiting for a table, then hanging out at the waterside table waiting for food. It was a perfectly beautiful day, there were pelicans everywhere entertaining us, and I heard some great stories I've never heard before.

Including one about my dad getting drunk in the Bahamas 20 years ago, and falling off a tour trolley while it was in motion, and chasing it for blocks, unable to get back on, while his also-drunk buddy laughed and encouraged him, and their wives looked on, mortified. Dad spent this whole story rolling his eyes. Afterward, I asked for his version. He said "Well, first of all, that didn't happen at all. And second, it didn't happen like THAT." When I asked for a more detailed version, he said "Well, I admit we went to the Bahamas." Sadly, he always snorts at Mom's stories, but it's pretty rare I can get details about his perspective.

Then we drove over to Naples to stroll on the pier. The Naples Pier has a blanket fishing license, so it's always covered with people fishing, and the water below is lined with gulls and terns and pelicans, hoping for leftovers tossed from the gutting stations, and trying to snatch fish off the lines as they're reeled in. There was also an osprey hunting the area — we got to see it snatch a disoriented fish out of the water just after a fisherman threw it back — and a pod of dolphins, including several juveniles, lazily circling, close enough that we could have tossed them fish as well.

That was a full day out in the sun, so we came back home and retreated to our various corners to read and chill out. Hey, magdalene1, we re-created the pesto-mango bruschetta thing, and it was pretty good without the chicken. And we did shots together, because they had some Frangelico in the pantry, so I told them about the con where I learned about the German Chocolate Cake shot, where you suck a lemon slice and do a Frangelico shot, and it pretty much tastes like German chocolate cake. So of course they had to try it. And then they liked it enough that they insisted on doing it again. If anyone had told me I'd spend this trip drinking with my parents and listening to Mom's sex stories, I would have told them I wanted some of whatever they were smoking. It's been an informative trip.

One more thing I learned: Not everyone paints their manatee mailboxes orange, but some people dress them up for holidays.

I'm-a feelin': pleased

Five words about my condition at the moment:

Weary. I got up early this morning to go to a farmer's market with Dad, which was an hour and a half or so of walking around looking at jewelry and produce and crafts. Then we got Mom and went kayaking for four hours, down an inlet and out to the sea, starting out at noon under direct blazing sunlight, and paddling back against the tide and the wind. And once we got home and rested briefly, they wanted to go golf, and I would have preferred to collapse, but I wasn't going to be physically shown up by my 65-year-old parents, so off we went for another hour of walking. They went to bed immediately after dinner. I can't believe I'm still awake.

Full. It's St. Patrick's Day, so Dad insisted on making corned beef. But he doesn't like cabbage, so he made it with carrots and potatoes instead. And daaaaaamn, it was good. Makes me want to go home and make corned beef and cabbage stew. There's a slow-cooker project I hadn't heard of. Trouble is that it's corned beef, so it's mega-salty, so I ate a bunch of stew and drank about a gallon of water, and I feel like a water balloon now.

Marked. I have a big red X on my back. Sort of. It's more like a big white X, outlined neatly in red. When Mom put sunscreen on my back, she didn't quite get it up to the edges of my swimsuit. So I have a burn just outlining the white space my suit covered. It looks like a target. That said, given how much time we spent out in the sun today, I'm impressed the sunscreen held up and I'm not MORE burned.

Singy. Dad had tequila and Triple Sec but not margarita mix, which seemed like a waste, so I went and got some. And spent the rest of the evening singing "Margaritaville," which brought up memories of singing it with people at Extremely Drunken Karaoke a week ago. Except they had their own line they all shouted after the second line of the chorus. So I made up my own end to the chorus. So our version wound up going like this:

Wasted away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt (Yelled, in perfect tempo: "Where the fuck's my shaker of salt?")
Some people claim
That there's a woman to blame
But I know
That she stole my damn salt.

Amused. When Mom and I went to get the margarita mix, she told me a story in which Dad told her there's an old golfing tradition that says if a man's first stroke fails to take his ball past the woman's tee, someone's supposed to moon him. So at some point, they were playing, and his first shot was short, so she mooned him. And he was appalled and concerned about being kicked off the golf course. I told her "How is it that I've been hearing all these old family stories over and over for years when I could be hearing stories about youthful sexual awakening and public indecent exposure instead?" So she promptly told me a story about how, again about five years into their marriage, they were driving somewhere and they saw a magazine sitting in the middle of the road, so Dad stopped and picked it up, and it was a porn magazine. And they took it home and looked at it together, and they were doing things she'd never seen before, and she asked Dad what was going on, and he said "C'mere, I'll show you." I said "What could possibly have been in a porn magazine that you'd never encountered before?" She said "You cannot possibly believe how repressed and naive we were back then."

Now, on the other hand, she's the lady willing to drop trou on the fairway. So something must have gone right SOMEWHERE.

I'm-a feelin': tired

Tara: You may resume reading now. Enjoy!

That previous conversation happened at a nature center we just happened across today while running other errands. We were supposed to go clothes shopping and Dad was going to nap in the car, but we saw the sign for this place and went wandering around watching gopher turtles and black-and-white warblers and striped anoles gallivant around. The pamphlet for the place said it also had a population of coyotes, horned owls, gray foxes, and black bears. We spent some time talking about how much we'd love to see a black bear, but how it would be nervous-making to run across one with nothing between us and it. Eventually, Mom wandered off to talk to a park ranger about whether there were burrowing owls in the area, and I wound up talking to Dad:

Dad: When we tell people about this place, let's just tell them we saw bears here. Lots of bears. Possibly eating people.

Me: You know, I've been listening to Mom's stories all day, but yours sound more interesting. You should tell stories more often.

Dad: Well, I tell some of the same stories she tells, but my versions are better because they have more bears. And blood.

Me: That's why you should tell more stories! I want to hear some of these bears-and-blood stories.

Dad: Also, at the end of them, everyone finally gets to take a nap.

Me: That sounds great. After that huge lunch and all this running around, I'm pretty tired. Can I be in this story and fight bears and take a nap too?

Dad: Oh, sure. The great thing about my stories is that anyone can be in them and take naps. As long as they're quiet.

I'm-a feelin': amused

Psst! Hey Tara! You might not want to read this one.

Me: Chris hooked me on this Mumford & Sons song, but it has the F-word in it. So if you wonder why I keep singing the same two lines of a song and then stopping, that's why.

Mom: Ha. I remember when Hair came out, and I went around singing songs from that all the time, and it was full of dirty words. [Pause.] There was one where I didn't know what any of the words meant, but I kept singing it anyway. One of them — cun-something? Starts with a C?

Me: Umm. Cunnilingus?

Mom: That's it! I kept singing that song, and one day, your father — we had been married for five years — and he said "Marion, do you even know what that word means?" And I said no. And he said "C'mere, I'll show you."

Me: …

Mom: TMI, TMI?

Me: Actually, I think that's a pretty charming story. How'd that go for you?

Mom: Really well, actually!

I'm-a feelin': astonished

Hey look, I am in Florida. And once I got here, I basically had to boil myself and everything I own.

( Gross body and girly TMI stuff. You have been warned. )

And to top it all off, when I got in and opened my suitcase, the contents were as gross as I was. My nearly-full bottle of sunscreen had opened itself up and become a nearly-empty bottle of sunscreen, coating half the contents of my suitcase in the process. I had to start the trip by doing laundry and hand-washing all my toiletries, which got the worst of it because they were in the plastic bag with the sunscreen. (Fortunately, most toiletries come in plastic bottles or cases. I'm trying not to think about my toothbrush.) So hey, fun trip so far! But it's almost worth feeling filthy and vile just because it feels so good to be clean afterward.

I'm-a feelin': yuck.

I just had a conversation with an angry drunken peeing man. That was a weird end to a long evening.

I went to a games night at a local games store tonight; I showed up just in time to miss the start of a game, so I went and got steak teriyaki at a nearby Thai place, and Fig Newtons at the local Walgreens, and walked back in in time for the next game.

We played until we got kicked out at midnight, at which point a crowd of us walked to the Red Line, where the station attendant told us there were no southbound trains, just northbound ones. There was a crowd of cold, disconsolate people waiting out front for an emergency shuttle. I was the only one going north, so I went up to grab the train, and the driver promptly told me no, there were no northbound trains, due to a fire at Loyola, and that he was headed south. I went back down and told the station attendant — this was all clearly news to her, and she was very confused — but the gamers had all grabbed cabs, and the crowd of shuttle-waiters were largely doing the same thing. I walked to Broadway just in time to miss a bus, but the shuttle pulled up as I got back to the station.

The shuttle driver was a hoot. He talked to the whole bus at top volume, telling us the CTA authorities were running around like chicken with their heads cut off, and no one had any idea what was going on, and he hadn't been given any kind of route, and they kept trying to run him around to different places without ever getting anywhere, so he was just going to fake it. He said no one at the CTA can handle an emergency, and any time anything goes wrong, everyone panics and starts sending out contradictory information, or there's no information at all, but he didn't care one bit because he was about to go off shift when the fire started, and now he was getting paid overtime to run around while they kept changing his orders. He said he was just going to do the common-sense thing and try to follow the Red Line route, but he'd have to completely fake it when we got to the Loyola area because no one was clear on which roads were blockaded.

We actually sailed right by Loyola, which was a riot of fire trucks and ambulances, but with no road blockages. Everyone on the bus was either half-asleep or drunk and giddy. Two guys behind me, a young black man and an older Asian dude with no front teeth and a wild mop of disheveled hair, had a VERY LOUD CONVERSATION where the Asian guy wanted to use the black guy's phone just-for-a-minute and the black guy was explaining that they'd met before at some event where the Asian guy was dancing like a crazy person. Everybody else was shouting out the bus stops as we got to them: "Morse! We just reached Morse! Are you listening? Anybody want to get off at Morse? This here is Morse!" It was halfway between a touching display of cooperation and emergency group social concern, and a pain-in-the-ass game of Yelling Telephone.

Then we got to the Howard terminal, where the Red Line ends, and the bus driver said "Thank you all for playing this ridiculous game, and sorry the CTA is so screwed up. Anybody got a cigarette? I'm going to be doing this half the night now, so I need something to keep me awake!" I gave him the rest of the box of Fig Newtons, and he seemed DELIGHTED.

The Purple Line train was waiting in the station, so all in all the whole trip was no big deal for me, apart from a little uncertainity and slowness. But then a northbound Red Line train pulled in, and about 50 loud, drunk, in some cases extremely frustrated or extremely hyper people poured into my train car. One of them, a twentysomething, soft-faced white kid wearing two stacked baseball hats (huh?) Ancient-Marinered me with his eyes and said "This has been the worst night of my life. You would not believe how long it took to get here." But when I spoke to him calmly and asked what his experience had been like — where he got on, how long he'd been waiting, what had happened to his train — he seemed nonplussed, like I was undermining him by being sedate at him. He turned to someone else and started complaining that his group had been forced off their train at Wilson and told to await a shuttle below, then herded back up to the train, where some girls were smoking meth, and then when the train finally started moving, it just skipped past their stops altogether.

Meanwhile, some people got on the train and there was a SCREAMING HOWLING CHEERING REUNION between people who had apparently parted ways earlier in the night to seek alternate routes home, but had all wound up in the same place. Then more people got on the train and there were more SCREAMING HOWLING CHEERING REUNIONS with back-pounding and overly enthusiastic handshaking. Then a young Japanese girl started asking me over and over if the train we were on (northbound Purple line) was going to Lawrence (a southern Red Line stop). She didn't seem to understand the answer at all, no matter how many times I told her.

Then we started north, and some people on the train started SHRIEKING WITH FURY because they thought they were on a southbound Red Line train, and some of them — all thinnish, youngish white guys, all in Blackhawks gear, and apparently up from the game downtown — had a conversation that went like this:

"Where did you think this train was going?"
"Shut up, you're drunk and ugly!"
"Well, YOU'RE fat and stupid!"
"Well, so's your momma!"
"Hell, I know my momma's fat!"

Fortunately, my stop is the first one on the Purple Line, so I escaped any more of that. I got off with one guy, yet another soft-faced white twentysomething, who told me "This has been the worst night of my life. At least I can take this train to Sheridan." When I told him he was on the Purple Line, which goes nowhere near Sheridan, he refused to believe me and kept repeating himself. Then he asked for a cigarette. Then he asked if I was "going to tell on me" if he peed off the platform. Then he whipped it out and did so.

It was a weird night all around. I basically ignored the peeing and told him yes, he needed to take the southbound train back to Howard and get on a Red Line, yes really, yes, no matter how long he'd waited for a train, good night and good luck. And then I walked home. And it seems like I had the best deal on that train, because it didn't sound like any of them were getting where they were going any time soon.

I'm-a feelin': grateful

Here's one of the many things making me happy lately: Soup. I bought my first slow-cooker with my Christmas bonus money (yeah, we don't get huge bonuses, but we get them in Amazon credit, so it's fun to figure out what exactly to spend it on) and I've spent the last month making huge amounts of soup. The freezer currently contains four different kinds of homemade frozen soup, and I've dispensed soup to four different couples at this point, plus served stew at a dinner party.

This is one of my favorite soup recipes. I have no idea where it's from; searching for the text online, the only place I found that used this wording was a message-board forum, which is definitely not where I got it. But at any rate:

( West African Peanut Chicken Stew recipe… )

So that's the basic recipe as I've been serving it. But a couple of weeks ago, I went over to insidian's and she'd made a soup inspired by it, using canned pumpkin as a starch instead of potatoes, and adding black beans. And it was like someone turned a light on in my head, or at least my soup pot. I tried it again the next day, omitting the chicken and instead using a can of rinsed black beans, a zucchini, a squash, and a couple of stalks of celery. (The latter two, I diced with the rind on, sauteed for a few minutes, and then added just after the potato. The beans, I just tossed in at the same time. And then I let it all hang out and make friends, as magdalene1 sometimes says, in the slow cooker for six hours on low. I sliced the celery and tossed it in half an hour before eating it, so it kept some crunch.)

I normally don't like squash or zucchini in anything, and I generally don't like beans. But they all worked fine in the soup, just giving it more texture and more richness. I realized as I was eating it that I could have made it with mushroom or veggie stock and it would have been vegan, and possibly the only vegan thing I've ever really, really loved eating. Also, next time it definitely wants mushrooms. And corn.

Basically, I realized this recipe can be used to make soup I will like out of any vegetables, no matter how infernally healthy. Thanks, insidian! I feel like I have been handed the Philosopher's Stone: Add these spices and do a hell of a lot of dicing, and you can turn anything into magical soup.

Providing you like cumin, coriander, tumeric, and peanut butter, of course. If not, I'm afraid you're on your own. At least until I throw all my other soup recipes at Sid.

I'm-a feelin': pleased

I gave up planning social events for Lent.

This is kind of silly, because I’m not Catholic, and I didn’t even think of it until about eight days into Lent. But once I decided to do it, I’ve stuck by it, and I’ve enjoyed the results.

I plan too much stuff. I like my friends, and I have a lot of friends, and I don’t get enough one-on-one time with any of them, the kind of time where you get to actually catch up and find out how their lives are going and where their heads are at. I like making people meals and showing people movies and trying new restaurants with people and generally hanging out. I like parties. But I’d gotten to that point I hit about once a year where I feel like I’m doing all the planning, where I wouldn’t see anyone if I didn’t take the initiative, and where I start to feel kind of used. And also the point where I felt like I was spending as much time herding cats — suggesting dates, suggesting plans, trying to get people to respond, switching dates around, trying to get people to respond again — as I was actually enjoying the results.

So I cut it out, with the idea that either other people would take up the planning reins and I’d end up refreshed and happy with life, or that they wouldn’t and I’d have a month or so of mostly hanging out with Cass, and I’d end up refreshed and starving for a social life enough that I wouldn’t mind doing all the planning. Or alternately, that I’d finally end up having time to attend some of the roughly 1,100 events Meetup.com alerts me to every month.

I ended up with option A. Here’s how the weekend went:

Friday night I went to a Meetup.com social mixer at the Vertigo Lounge, a 26th-floor glassed-in bar with an outdoor deck at the Dana Hotel, three blocks from my office. I was pretty nervous about this, because signals were pretty mixed about whether it was a social party for whoever, or a singles meetup for twentysomethings. Cass teased me a lot about my shopping around for new boyfriends; I countered that I was just going to bring us home a couple of playmates. Mostly, though, I went to prove to myself that I could walk in among a bunch of non-nerdy strangers and mingle and converse like a regular-type person. And I did. It was an interesting group, a mix of couples and groups and people going stag, with a wide range of races and ages and professions. I wound up talking to six or seven different people at some length, and among them were a couple of grad students, a marketing research analyst, and a chemical engineer. It was dark and noisy and shouty, so even though the views were beautiful and people were very, very friendly, it was decidedly not my scene. Still I acquitted myself reasonably well as a social creature for a couple of hours, then left when I hit my extrovert limit, and wandered around downtown Chicago for a while before making my way home.

Saturday spreadnparanoia took me out to brunch at a place called Jerry’s she was reviewing. The owner came out and chatted with us, and then took charge of our meal, sending out samples of a bunch of different house specialties. It was an amazing meal and a really good time.

We got back to my place just in time for a networked-videogaming party Cass was throwing in the afternoon, so that turned into hours of playing Left 4 Dead and Gears Of War 2 with whoever drifted through.

And once that was over, Cass passed out on our couch and I walked to the party mentioned in my last post, which turned out to be an hour or so of talking and drinking, and then a couple hours of playing Werewolf and drinking, and then Extremely Drunken Karaoke. Our hosts warned us that the karaoke rig was borrowed and wasn’t very good karaoke and had a pretty lousy song selection, and they weren’t kidding. First of all, it had KARAOKE 2000 on every screen on the DVD in 8-bit clunky drawn characters in eye-hurting colors. And second, easily half the songs were obscurish showtunes or “Why would you sing that at a party?” songs. My favorite was the all Alice Cooper disc, with “Welcome To My Nightmare” and “Dead Babies” and “Raped And Freezing,” among others. But we found a handful of songs worthy of bellowed happy sing-alonging, and I wound up mock-square-dancing with one of our hosts while singing John Denver’s “Thank God I’m A Country Boy,” and that was just about the best time ever. There were only five of us for karaoke, but it wound up being a rousing time that lasted until close to 4 a.m.

And then I was walking home and ran into Chris, who was also walking home after a late gaming session, so we ended up in his car driving around the city at 4 in the morning, with him playing music at me that he’d been wanting to introduce me to. I have discovered over the years that the best way to hear new music is through a good car stereo, early in the morning, after a long energetic night. It makes everything more intense and important. The music doesn’t always measure up the next morning, but it still brings back good memories every time I play it. I’m looking at you, Florence + The Machine and Booth And The Bad Angel.

Sunday Cass and I had a bunch of morning plans, but they were somewhat overruled by me staying out until 5 a.m. and him not realizing it was Daylight Savings Time again, so we punted and just went to Half Price Books to dump books, and the grocery store, and then back home for a few minutes before meeting SnP and her fiancé and Chris and his girlfriend for John Carter, which wasn’t bad.

And then after that, we had exactly 15 minutes at home—approximately enough time to toast some pumpkin seeds and mix up a salad—before we had to jump back in the car and go to Erin & Wil’s for potluck dinner and a couple of episodes of Slings & Arrows, which we’re watching in chunks as time allows.

And then it was back home and winding down for the evening. And that was one VERY full weekend of events which I did not plan, and was not responsible for catering, and did not have to stress about whether they’d actually succeed, and I could get used to this. I need to go on planning diets more often. Also, I’m currently feeling like my friends — and my new friends — and possibly everyone else in the city I don’t know — are THE BEST.

I'm-a feelin': happy

Last night, magdalene1 invited me to join her at a party thrown three blocks from my house by someone I'd only met once previously, at a meetup for people who play Werewolf periodically. When I walked in the door, the hostess put a Midori cocktail in my hand, and five minutes later I was having this conversation with Julia, a lady I'm just getting to know from the same group:

Me: This futon is so soft and leans so far back, I feel like I'm going to have two drinks and then fall asleep on it sitting up like this.

Julia: Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you.

Me: Why not? Is this going to turn into one of those kinds of parties where if I fall asleep, people will give me a Sharpie mustache and draw dicks all over my face?

Julia: I could do the mustache, but I suck at drawing cocks.

Me: I'm not sure I've ever drawn a penis. For all I know I'm terrific at it. Maybe I have an untapped hidden talent. Maybe I'm wasting my potential.

Julia: For all you know, it's your SUPERPOWER. You might turn out to be DICK DRAWING DAME, superheroine at large!

Me: Whoa, yeah. So whenever the supervillains show up to take over the world, I just run over and draw penises on their faces with Sharpies, and then they run away humiliated?

Julia: Well, they can't let the world see them like that. You can't make a victory speech to your new peons with a cock on your forehead. So they'd have to go into hiding until the Sharpie finally wore off.

That was the point where I realized it was going to wind up being a really, really good evening. We ended up going off into the details of Dick Drawing Dame's superhero costume (she has a penis-shaped cutout over her cleavage so she can store extra Sharpies in there), which led to a more general discussion of terrible superhero costumes, which led to conversations about superheroes and women and feminism and online dating and a lot more, and I didn't leave the party til some point past 3 a.m., at which point I wound up hugging everyone who hadn't already left. It was a lovely evening overall.

But now I'm afraid to try drawing a penis, because what if it turns out I'm not good at it after all? Such a lovely fantasy of superheroism, completely spoiled by a mere lack of any facility whatsoever.

I'm-a feelin': happy

So Chris and I were talking on IM, and he mentioned a creditor that once owned his employer $20k for services rendered over the course of five years. I said I was surprised it went that far; he said the creditor paid chunks at entirely random intervals, creating the illusion that it was safe to continue rendering services. I compared this to experiments with rats and intermittent reinforcement, which have shown that if you reward a rat with a food pellet every time it presses a button, it will only press the button when hungry, and if you never reward it no matter how many times it presses the button, it will stop trying. But if you reward it entirely randomly, it will obsessively hit that button over and over and over, wasting huge efforts in the hopes of eventual positive results. This behavior has been used to explain why people gamble, even knowing intellectually that they're being conned.

For the purpose of the rest of this conversation, assume that Chris' full name is Chris Carpenter, since I'm sure he wouldn't like me revealing his full actual name here or anywhere else on the Internet. Also, his girlfriend and I have been playing “soup exchange,” where we make a lot of soup and trade it, but they currently owe me soup, which he’s expressed concern about because soup interest can be crippling at today’s rates.

Me: I need to start applying rat-gambler experiment logic to my daily life more often. As it would enable me to rack up vast amounts of social and financial debt with minimal effort and payout on my part.

Chris: Heh. It generally doesn't work on businesses.

Me: Depends on the size of the company. And all companies are made of people. And you never know until you try.

Chris: True, but generally companies have put policies in place to avoid cons.

Me: Perhaps it will become a meta project. In that if I try it on 10 businesses and it works on two of them I can be all "It worked! Occasionally!" and then try it on 20 other places. Also, I was specifically extending it to social interactions as well.

Chris: I'd love to read your stunt journalism book about it. Just don't include your doing it to me in the book.

Me: I'll give you a fake name. Car Chrispenter. No one will see through that.

Chris: Char Crispenter, por favor.

Me: I might be able to make that compromise. Tell you what, I'll use that in 20% of the editions, so you can live in hope of me doing it in all future editions.

Chris: Hmm. Let me think about that… No.

Me: I'm afraid Car Chrispenter has no legal rights over what I say about him. But don't worry, we'll fix it in the next edition for sure. Or at least the one after that.

Chris: :(

Me: Aw. Tell you what. Come complain to me about it 10 times, and I'll be comforting and helpful at least twice in those 10 times. And once, I will give you a tasty handful of rat chow.

Chris: Hey Tasha, I'm not happy about this "Car Chrispenter" pseudonym thing.

Me: Psh, whatever.

Chris: Hey Tasha, I'm still not happy about this "Car Chrispenter" pseudonym thing.

Me: Psh, whatever, jerkface.

Chris: Hey Tasha, I continue to be unhappy about this "Car Chrispenter" pseudonym thing.

Me: Psh, whatever, stupid jerkface for jerks.

Chris: Hey Tasha, I'm quite unhappy about this "Car Chrispenter" pseudonym thing.

Me: Oh geez, that's terrible! I didn't mean to offend you. I'll get right on fixing that. And how are you doing? Can I help you with anything? Would you like more soup?

Chris: Some soup would be nice.

Me: It's rat-chow soup, you'll like it.

Chris: Tasha, you big meanie, I'm not happy about this "Car Chrispenter" pseudonym thing.

Me: Psh, whatever, soup-debtor.

Chris: Hey Tasha, I'm unhappy about this "Car Chrispenter" pseudonym thing and the soup you never gave me.

Me: I think we established that you still have soup-debt.

Chris: Dammit. So about this pseudonym thing?

Me: Huh? What about it?

Chris: I'm not happy! Can you fix it?

Me: Psh, whatever, dumb-face stupid-boots.

Chris: and finally, "Tasha my friend, would you be so kind as to resolve this ‘Car Chrispenter’ pseudonym thing by going with my alternate suggestion?"

Me: Why, I would be happy to! Anything to make you feel comfortable with my reportage on your reaction to what was in fact a somewhat intrusive and callous social experiment conducted entirely for my own financial gain!

Chris: Yay! I quit and I win forever!

Me: Oh, nicely done. By the way, did you hear that my book ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE: CAR CHRISPENTER AND THE RAT-GAMBLER EXPERIMENT is going out for an 11th edition?

Chris: *zot*

Me: It's been selling really well. I think people really enjoy reading about the foolish, bumbling hopefulness of that Car fellow.

I'm-a feelin': pleased

The scene: Morning. Our bathroom. Cass is washing up, I’m coming in to put in my contacts. I grope him as a manner of casual course.

Cass: Oh! Surely not while I am all shirtless and vulnerable!

Me: Hey, the two don’t necessarily equate. Remember the time you shirtlessly punched that guy in the face just for looking at you wrong?

Cass: And then all those bullets bounced off me, yeah. [Pause. Quoting The Simpsons:] And then Maggie laughed. She’s such a little trouper. [Pause. Not quoting The Simpsons:] And then Maggie pooped. She’s such a little pooper.

Me: Ugh. You sound like my 4-year-old cousin who thinks “poop” is the funniest word in the word. “Poop. Hee hee. Poop.”

Cass: Well, as a man, I must admit that hee hee, poop.

Me: Man, MEN.

Cass: Ah yes, MAN MAN, the superhero bitten by a radioactive man, and given the proportional strength of a man.

[By this time, I’m walking out of the bedroom half-dressed. Cass mock-bites me, as a matter of casual course.]

Me: Hey, you aren’t radioactive yet, you have no excuse.

Cass: But I'm going to be someday, and I need to practice.

Me: Becoming radioactive isn’t something that just happens to men. It’s something you have to work at over time. Wanting it badly just isn’t enough. You have to have a plan.

Cass: Aw man, is this another one of your moral fables, like “The Radioactive Ant And The Radioactive Grasshopper”?

I'm-a feelin': busy

Wednesday night, Cass and I went to a screening of a film we weren’t expecting much from, but both wound up really enjoying: Being Flynn, directed by Paul Weitz. (Normally I can’t talk about films I see before release, because the studios embargo any online mention of them by critics before the release date, but they didn’t with this one; maybe they figure it can use any help it can get.) Weitz was there for a Q&A after the screening, and he impressed me so much with his frankness and his self-effacing humor that I went to the PR rep afterward and asked if he was available for interviews.

She looked flabbergasted, and said “I asked you if you wanted to talk to him, and you guys turned me down. I think you were the one who said no!” Oops. I told her we turn down a lot of interviews, but being unexpectedly impressed with the film and the director made a big difference. Besides, I told her, Weitz’s filmography is all over the place: This is the guy who did About A Boy, but also Little Fockers and American Pie. And a lot of weird personal projects, like In Good Company and American Dreamz. And the film version of Cirque Du Freak, which was maybe as good and weird and ambitious as a film adapted from a bog-standard kids’ book about a vampire and a circus could be.

Funny thing is, I wasn’t the one who turned her down—that was Scott, who shoulda known better because he actually interviewed Paul Weitz and his brother/partner Chris Weitz (who has a similarly checkered film history, having directed The Golden Compass and Twilight: New Moon but also A Better Life, which is up for a Best Actor Oscar this year) 10 years ago. That’s a great interview, and I highly recommend it.

But she managed to fit me in for the next day, and I found out I was getting the interview about two hours before the interview actually happened, which would normally be cause for BLIND FLAILING PANIC, but in this case wasn’t an issue because I’d already seen that he’d have plenty to say no matter what I asked.

And he did turn out to be a very honest, open interview—I opened with “So, your film career has been eclectic—” and he laughed and said I was being kind and that “motley” would be a better word. He seems to be the rare director without a lot of ego, but with artistic confidence and vision. I absolutely enjoyed talking to him, and wish we’d had more time together. And I hope people see the movie. I’m reading the memoir it was based on right now—I made a special side trip to the library yesterday to grab it, and I couldn’t believe all the copies were still on the shelf. How is it that no one else at that screening thought “I really want to read that book now”?

I'm-a feelin': content

Monday night, I got to participate in an Oscars preview panel with critics from Filmspotting, the Chicago Tribune, and the Windy City Times. It was my first time formally meeting one of these critics, though we've shared a screening room on many occasions. And yet we've never spoken — which is pretty common in the screening room, which is often full of people messing about with laptops or smartphones while a small group loudly and dismissively talks about film.

And the first thing he said to me was "Oh, it's so nice to meet you! I mean, I've been in the screening room with you a lot, but of course I didn't DARE approach."

Huh?

And then later we were onstage and we were all chattering away for an audience of people who'd paid $15 a pop to listen to us, and the same critic mentioned that The Artist star Jean Dujardin had previously been in some French movies, "OSS 7 or something," and I said "OSS 117." Because I've seen and liked and reviewed both those movies. And he said "Oh, well, of course I knew YOU'D know that, Tasha."

Huh?

In this guy's eyes, I'm apparently a snappish, intimidating trivia-font, I guess? I don't even know. In my eyes, I'm a shy person who struggles to keep up with my peers and boyfriend who have all collectively memorized the IMDB. Just more proof that I will never, ever be able to properly grok how other people see me.

Meanwhile, my IMDB-memorizing boyfriend charged on to victory: The Chicago Tribune critic asked a trivia question about the actor with the most Oscars, and about 10 people guessed before Cass got it right. So now he gets to have dinner and a movie with the Trib critic, and I'm kinda jealous. Hopefully they will not bond over IMDB trivia memorization and run off together. Because that's how I see Cass, of course: Equally attracted to all critics, and ready to run off at a moment's notice. And yet he probably doesn't even see himself that way. Go fig.

Yesterday, a Polish co-worker brought the whole office paczki to celebrate Fat Tuesday. She ended up with a huge variety pack — I tried small pieces of at least six different kinds myself, adding up to about one whole one, which amounted to about 20 pounds of sugar black-holed down into the size of a doughnut. Super-good. Last night, various people came over for dinner and a movie (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), and I mentioned the paczki, and got to hear everyone else's tales of trying to acquire paczki during the day. It's strangely enjoyable to think about all of us on our separate quests for the same negligible things.

But one person present (whom I'm not outing to avoid potential work-related flak) specifically said she missed out on paczki because her workplace has a policy where if everyone in her group turns in their timecards properly and on time, the office gets doughnuts. And if anyone fails to, the office doesn't get doughnuts and the malefactor's name is emailed to everyone so everyone knows, say, it's Brian's fault there are no doughnuts today. Yesterday, it was going to be paczki, but someone didn't turn in their card, "So instead of paczki, we all got shame."

Which rapidly turned into a series of suggestions: 1) Maybe whoever's getting shamed should just buy the office some damn doughnuts. What the hell, they're cheap. (Turns out this has actually happened. Go, unshamed screw-up.) 2) Since this smacks of Army group discipline ("All of you have to give me 50 pushups, and if anyone can't, you're all running five miles."), maybe the whole group should get to put doughnuts in socks and beat Brian with them. 3) Maybe a less cruel and hateful system would be, the whole office gets doughnuts EXCEPT Brian, who instead gets smacked publicly with a ruler.

And THAT led to the idea of a new Chicago food truck, Doughnuts And Shame. Because you can't have someone in the office empowered to hit someone else in the office, so of course you outsource that. One participant in this conversation, who hates her job and is ready to move on, was pretty convinced this was her new job model: Show up at a firm in a catsuit, box of doughnuts in one hand, ruler in the other, ready to dispense doughnuts and shame to whoever management designates.

Of course, from there it mutated to Doughnuts And Pain, then Doughnuts And Domination, which is an entirely different business model. But I'm still fairly sure it'd take off. We just need someone to make the doughnuts, so S. doesn't have to show up at all these companies sweaty from standing over the oven, in a black leather catsuit dusted with flour and powdered sugar. Any volunteers? Anyone else need a new career?

I'm-a feelin': amused

Baby bellas were on sale at the grocery store recently, so I'm sitting down to my roughly biannual plate of scrambled eggs with scallions and mushrooms. It isn't an attractive meal, but it's so delicious. But now I can't make and eat it anymore without thinking of thefirethorn's oldest son, fireandcheese. Because last time I visited them, I made her a big plate of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and spinach. The kids had already been fed; we were not in any way going to try to convince them to try mushrooms and spinach. But just as I handed her her plate, fireandcheese walked into the room, looked at it, and said "Eww."

And it delighted me. I never would have thought a kid declaring perfectly delicious, healthy food to be gross would be cute. But it was just the way he said it — not a big theatrical "I'm not going to eat that," but a tiny involuntary astonished reaction, exactly the kind of slightly frightened noise someone might emit when faced with a bloody car wreck or other disaster. It wasn't intended to convey information to us at all.

It was, in essence, dismay at what we were about to do to ourselves.

And that was all there was to it — he didn't complain about it, we didn't try to change his mind. We ate our grown-up food and proclaimed it good.

But that tiny, horrified "Eew." has taken up humorous residence in my brain. It's hard to explain why it's so damn funny, except to say that fireandcheese is normally a very expressive, uninhibited child, and we managed to stymie him past words just by eating food we both liked.

This does not make me like scrambled eggs with vegetables any less, but now every time I see them, I hear a tiny, hurt "Ew." in the back of my mind. Sorry, kid. Grown-ups are weird sometimes.

I'm-a feelin': pleased

I spontaneously woke up in a fantastically good mood this morning. So fantastic in fact that I realized I was belting "Winter Wonderland" in the shower. I'm not much of a shower-singer normally, and I don't like Christmas carols, so I have no idea where this is coming from, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Especially tonight. For Valentine's Day, I decided it was time I did something special with Cass, something I've long resisted, but that he really, really wanted. He's never really pressured me, but he's hopefully brought it up over and over, and I've been reluctant, but I finally broke down and admitted it might be kinda hot to try crossing that final frontier for once.

So we're gonna play some networked strategy videogames together tonight.

When I told him, he had one word for me, delivered in Gomez Addams voice, à la this favorite old comic:

I'm-a feelin': giddy

Me: Are you going to make the last train?

Cass: Yup.

Me: What shall you make it out of?

Cass: You know me, I was just going to get some of that boxed train mix.

Me: Aw, that stuff’s terrible for you. It’s full of preservatives. Processed pasteurized train-bits…

Cass: Train-sitive fats…

Me: Ohhhh. Ow. OW. [Thinks about it for a second.] OWWWWWWWWWW.

Cass: Perhaps you shouldn’t play this game?

I'm-a feelin': ow

This has been a HORRIBLE morning of personal failure (completely missing a meeting solely because I forgot it was on the schedule), technological failure (computer breaking down, needing fixes, then breaking down again), weather failure (snow may mean canceling our weekend plans, or it may just complicate them unpleasantly), and more technological failure (a key piece of recording equipment I need is apparently in a drawer at home). So I appreciated this bit of heartwarming nonsense from our web producer Sarah. We went to lunch with a freelancer, but she left her wallet in the office, and I paid for her lunch. When we got back, she handed me a $20, and I handed her a $10.

Sarah: Oh, this is too much. Can I give you an extra dollar?

Me: Eh, the whole bill was only $17. I'm fine. I'm not sweating a dollar one way or another.

Sarah: Because you're just Ms. Moneybags?

Me: Well, I do like to go to the strip clubs on the weekend and make it rain, cause I'm such a baller. So if you do give me an extra $1, I'ma make sure to pass it on to the hos.

Sarah: I'll go get it. Anything for the hos! [Comes back with a buck.] Is there a particular way I should fold this to be particularly appropriate for a strip club?

Me: No! If you're making it rain, you want them flat, so they float slowly downward.

Sarah: Or I could roll it up for you so you could use it as a coke straw.

Me: Sure, go ahead, I'll stick it in my wallet that way. I get really lazy when I'm doing coke, I never feel like taking the time to roll my own.

Sarah: [Just hands me the dollar.]

Me: Wait, you gonna make me roll my own? My coke awaits impatiently!

Sarah: Sorry! [Rolls it up loosely.] Huh, this is for a really big nose. Sorry, my coke-straw-rolling skills aren't what they once were.

Me: Mo coke, mo money, mo practice.

And this is why I have a dollar bill in the form of a straw in my wallet, and why I feel slightly better about life.

I'm-a feelin': stressed