Okay, I just poured a cocktail, donned my smoking vest and lit a cigarette. Let’s chat. In my drunken blogs I haven’t mentioned how this christmas went or anything about New Years. So I’ll do start there.
For those long time reader (I’m talking LJ and whatnot), you’ll recall that the holidays normally Suck. Well the biggest surprise of 2009 was liking Christmas. I spent it with my friend Kirk who came up from NC, and my Charles and we went with some other misfits to see Sherlock Holmes (which I thought was awesome). Also I got awesome gifts. No really, awesome freaking gifts.
I got this beautiful graphic novel called Bayou, which if you are at all into Southern culture and magical realism, and things that are sad and creepy and beautiful, it’s a must read. The art floored me. I’ll also be updating goodreads when school starts, so if you’re following me there, you’ll see it.
It was the year of good books because I also received Absolute Death, which Neil Gaiman was nice enough to sign and sketch an ugly, 45 year old, lesbian werewolf in the front of. He’s a very kind guy.
I’m leaving out a ton of great other gifts, but that’s mostly to brag about the books.
Charles had been listening to me talk about Joe Hill’s new book Horns since I found out it is coming out in February. i even suggested he steal his boss’s advanced reader copy of it. Well he did one better, and found me an advanced reader’s copy. I freaked out. Many kisses were given.
The book itself was brilliant where it was brilliant and heavy-handed in other parts of it. I will say overall I loved it, and the characters and stories and metaphors have stayed with me since I read it. The obvious metaphor of the book (which is about a guy who wakes up with a hangover to discover he has grown horns) is not really the overarching metaphor of the book. I think the real meaning is especially poignant if you love someone intensely, and it is a beautiful – if unlikely love story. I highly recommend it for a quick read, though I’m not making any claims that it will one day be cannon. Also please note that regardless of marketing, it is not a horror book. Really. There is nothing in it that is meant to be horror, but fucking publishers and marketing teams don’t know how to copy with magical realism.
Kirk stayed in the ass-end of Brooklyn with me for 8 days, and dealt with the odd smell of chicken wings without so much as a complaint. There was an absinthe night which is hands down the best night on absinthe I’ve ever had. It made me wish I was in a safer neighborhood, because i would have loved to go walking.
Then New Years Eve came around and I was -surprise surprise – wingslinging. I made it home in time to ring in the New Year on my couch reading. I was soon joined by my love, and I cal it an Epic win. Shit has been kind of downhill since then, but that’s really the job.
there has been some cell phone fuckery, some writing, a lot of cursing, some tears, and even more wingslinging. (I am the wingslinger. Feel the heat from my blazin’ buffalo sauce).
I miss my philly friends like crazy, but Sara was nice enough to drive up here on a sunday, deliver me a bicycle and a freaking wawa hoagie (classic italian. god damn I love wawa). We sat in my living room and did that parakeet thing we do for five hours and then she drove home. Awesome.
I should be seeing Sparky and Matt 1 (only remaining Matt really) on Saturday for lunch.
School starts in a couple weeks. I know it’s a late start, but we go till June, so no hard feelings. I’ve got a great course load this semester, which I’ll go into on another post, and should be TAing an English Comp 1 course as well. This is of course on top of the waitressing and hopefully still putting work together on this novel. The truth of it is, that I think I can make it all work for a few months, and then find something better by the summer, when my funding disappears and I have to pay my rent off of what I make (right now my rent is paid through march).
I also want to bog at some point about the still no meds situation and the acceptance of the bipolar, without the acceptance of the psychiatrist’s words that I’m not a functional member of society.
Also I’d like to address the appearance of rampant drinking:
This is post-shift restaurant drinking. If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, you don’t know, but trust me it’s a job requirement. Also nights I don’t drink I tend not to blog, because I opt for a movie alone, or bed. Now I get that drunk emailing, tweeting, and blogging are bad things, but it also seems like the best time to talk to people who aren’t talking back. So it’s going to seem worse than it is, but I hope you don’t cart me off to a 12 step program just yet.
Okay I think that’s it for now, but I’ll be back.
Neil Gaiman’s hair has officially becoming a character from The Dreaming. Not a main character, mind you, but somewhere less important that Merv and more so than the young boy Cluracan is caught with.
I’m dead serious right now, I wish I could paint things that break all the laws of gravity and physics to impart upon how righteous that man’s hair is.
So last night gina and I went to Housing Works in SoHo for her birthday and for a charity author/songwriter thing.
The event last night was spectacular. 300 people, plus the incomparable AFP and Neil Gaiman raised $10k last night for housing works. It gives me goosebumps to be involved in that kind of amazing fundraising. And for those who are behind the times int he brilliance of modern charity’s – was done with merely $25 tickets and plenty of booze and merchandise.
Well the auction for the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book helped to when that sold for $1,300.
AFP sang and chatted, Neil read and chatted, they bantered, and then Gina and I outed them as a couple on stage. This is why you shouldn’t allow question jars if you have badly kept secrets.
I almost made a joke to Gina about how all bald guy with thick glasses are secretly Moby, but I didn’t. Then it turned out (when I read the write up in Spin) it was Moby.
Gina and I were interviewed by The New Yorker because we are Gaiman loving, tattoo sporting, ladies. I didn’t mention his magical hair. (Funny aside, his new kids book Crazy Hair debuted at NYT kids #3 spot Tuesday).
I got lots of compliments on my ink.
AFP Loved Gina’s birthday card that one of Gina’s friends made for Gina. You can see a picture of her laughing over it in the SPIN review (link is in a tweet below). They also mention the outing of the couple.
It was good. It was exhausting though. Sometimes when I’m depressed I sink myself farther into the lives of fictional characters, and that not only includes Gaiman’s characters and AFP’s songs, but it includes them too, because they are somewhat fiction for the fact that you feel that you know them, but you really don’t. Also when depressed and I experience any sort of joy, my monster works extra hard to counter balance it. So today I hate to hate myself with extra vigor. Exhausting.
More Blogs soon. Future Topics Include:
- Getting to Know the Fun Side of Depression
- Hormones and Happiness: Separating the Myths with a Scythe
- Why Has Coffee Forsaken Me?
- Inappropriate Capitalizations and the Crack Whores Who Love It
- Map-Reading is a Better Skill than CPR
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Pictures for this blog have been provided by an acquaintance of Warren Ellis (not the Australian musician, the drunk English author).
Skunk Mullet.
So went up to new york with sparky and matt (#1) to see two shows on Saturday. The first was Next to Normal, which stands a good shot at picking up a crap-load of tony’s this year. It was brilliant. The music and acting was superb. The whole cast was strong, the writing was phenomenal. Actually that was the problem, it was too good. It was too close to home.
It is about a bipolar mother with delusions who is trying to cope with life and her family and her disorder.
I highly recommend it for anyone looking to see a show that really gets under your skin. It is not the classic, saccharine broadway musical, which is why it is so popular.
(not my photo)
You can see Next to Normal tweeted @n2nbroadway and they post clips of each of the songs but it really only makes sense if you’ve already seen it.
After that we went and drank. And then to the village for Coraline (the musical).
Not going to lie, I was a little freaked out it would suck. A fifty year old Broadway veteran is playing Coraline who is a 9 year old girl. David Greenspan is playing the Other Mother (who is not a tranny in the book or anything) and the entire thing was scored for a toy piano. What if it sucked? I think things that are that creative have to be done just right or they will fall on their ass.
It was awesome. It was better than I could have hoped for. I was so ridiculously impressed by the entire cast, and the music, and the set that I was glowing. I swear I will go see everything that David Greenspan is ever in, not only did he write the book for it, but his performance as the Other Mother is dead on to what I needed it to be. I totally forgot he was in drag. It was perfect. If you think about it, the other mother is supposed to be just like coraline’s mother, but a little off. That’s the feeling you got when you watched his performance. Oh, I get the creepies when I think about it.
Unfortunately there are no press pictures from the show, which officially opens June 1st. But I snuck a bad iphone picture of the set.
It is basically all doors and pianos.
Okay I really have to clean so that I can lay by a pool mid day.
Happy Memorial Day to all.
So the other night I made the greatest salmon that has been. Salmon so great that it applauded me and itself as I ate it. Salmon so great that President Obama called and asked it to be secretary of the fish and game commission. I politely refused the request and finished the salmon.
It was brilliantly simple. I made a marinade with an egg, a ton of dill and fresh squeezed lemon juice. But then, and god knows what possessed me, I dusted it lightly in breadcrumbs. It kept in the flavor and the juices so well that it was far and away one of best spontaneous creations.
So filled with hubris I bought a swordfish steak and attempted to make that for dinner. Never in the history of kitchens or swordfish has a piece of food been so badly abused.
I read up on some recipes and decided that I could wing it. I want to say that this was my first mistake, but I think that clearly, cooking was my first mistake.
I decided on a honey-lime flavor combo, because I did a lot of drugs when I was younger, and this seemed like a great idea at the time. I hear this is the defense that Bush uses when asked why he ran for president.
Then I broiled it. This will hereby be referred to as Epic Mistake #2.
Now I’ve broiled things before. I’ve broiled steak (I think) and aside from that time that the oven caught on fire 1, I think I’m good at broiling things.
The trick to great fish is not to overcook it. But the trick to not getting food poisoning is not to undercook it. So I guess the real trick, one might say, is to know what the fuck you are doing.
I. So. Clearly. Did. Not.
I somehow managed to overcook parts and undercook other parts. It was simultaneously tough, raw, fishy, creepy, and bad at spelling. It was the worst misuse of swordfish that has ever been seen. I’m now on greenpeace’s watch-list for enemy’s of the sea. SVU (swordfish victims unit) has assigned me a case number, and I’m not allowed to leave the area until they’ve finished their investigations. I’m expecting representatives from the swordfish mafia to stop by while I’m sleeping and “have a talk with me”. And don’t think that because they are fish they aren’t badass. They are always fucking armed.
So for the rest of the week it will be sandwiches and vegetables. In fact what I ended up having for dinner was superb – an avocado. Yep. Just an avocado scooped out and mashed with some salt, pepper, garlic, and lime juice. So decadent.
So two latest obsessions. The first is my hair, which is short(ish) and thus I’ve been forced to try to learn how to style it. Which wuold be fine expect I have a very particular idea of what I want in mind, so it’s been very grueling to try and achieve this affect. Right now I’ve curled my hair with an iron and put it in pincurls to sleep in. I have no idea how this will affect it, but the adventure is getting there. And the fact that I sleep in a scarf with booby pins jabbing me in the skull. that’s an adventure too.
The other is obvious if you’ve been following the blog. Amanda Fucking Palmer 2. It was one of those things that happens. You have the CD, it’s fine, but not really doing anything for you. Then you get an urge to hear one song off of it. Next thing you know you’ve played that song at least 100 times in a day. You have held that song down and tortured it for all the information it can give you. Then you listened some more. And before you know it, you are done with that song, and on to the next one of the CD. Playing it 100 times. Asking it where it got the guns, who it was meeting in that coffee shop. You swear you’ll stop hurting it, if it’ll just cooperate and tell you what you need to know.
Or something like that. Right?
(Coffee shop should be one word.)
But I can’t share AFP with most of my friends because she’s more raw than Tori and more oblique than Ani. I think to some extent you need to have mentally arrested at a teenage girl level but still be in your twenties or thirties to appreciate her awesomeness.
NYC tomorrow for purely fun reasons. Matinee of Next To Normal, which I’m told will do well at the Tony’s this year. Then at 8pm I’m going to the see the musical of Coraline. I’m not sure what to expect. It’s a kids book, but it’s a gaiman book, so there is more there. But the 9 year old Coraline is being played by a 50 or a 60 year old broadway veteran. And David Greenspan is playing The Other Mother (which wasn’t a cross dresser or anything in the story so don’t think that makes any more sense). But the rats will have their little rat songs and I think it could be amazing. Or it could be worse that MAry Louise Parker’s falsetto and kung-fu fight scene that we saw last year.
Either way, you’ll find out.
1 Oh yeah, true story. Thought it might have been more my mother with half a bottle of bombay sapphire in her, but my recollection is sketchy due to smoke inhalation.
2 No I swear. She uses Fucking as her middle name. AFP for short.
So, I’d been planning on blogging fora few days now, but now I’m going to try and be coherent before that first drink sets in. You know the mojito I sucked down before pouring myself another and settling in with the laptop.
So I’m done with my undergrad studies officially. I took my last final last night and could care less how i did. I walk next saturday.
Moving forward into three months of free time, I’ve started a few plans to get back into fighting shape. I am officially back on lithium. I’ve also started a new OCP (Oral Contraceptive Pill) that helps with a hormonal imbalance I have called PCOS. It is a very common imbalance, but it effects women with a lot of physiological symptoms. This new OCP will reduce a lot of the imbalance and the symptoms of it. the down side is I’m very sensitive to estrogen so I’ve been getting headaches and nausea all week. I’m living in these acupressure arm bands and eating crystalized ginger. I feel like a nutjob, but I’m waiting it out.
I’ve also decided to start an aggressive exercise program to try and create a new level of stability. Here’s a helpful tip for those unstable out there, few things work better as a natural mood stabilizer than regular exercise.
Okay we are on the third mojito and the worst side effect seems to be my typing ability.
The writing project I’ve started is a graphic novel script. I started it as a real novel but somewhere in the pages of Marvel 1602, I realized that I needed to be working in that format. I won’t tell you anything really except to say it stars my ex-girlfriend and I’m hoping it’ll read like neil gaiman writing a dr. who script.
I really want an ice cream cake. Like want one so badly that if there was a porn ice cream cake magazine I would get it right now and stare at it’s frosty, tasty, centerfold.
So you seem to be up to date, and can keep up with all things moving forward. thank you for your patience is this trying time. Next blog scheduled for Sunday. . .
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