Schedule

Sun 1: 11-5
Mon 2: 5-cl
Wed 4: 4-cl
Thur 5: 10-6:30

The Simple Joys Of Maidenhood

Oh yes! My Austin booty! (no not that booty, although I'm sure I did pack a bit more junk in that truck while I was there as well.) Some of the things that make my carry-on all that much harder to zip up -- and believe me I nearly had to throw some clothes away to get my Raymond Scott figurine in my little rollerbag, if Joe hadn't found a way to fit it in his giant duffle. Whew! My underwear didn't wind up being balled up and thrown off the hotel balcony after all.

Joe bought I Need Drugs by The Austin Lounge Lizards at their show at the Cactus Cafe last Saturday night, which is probably our first new ALL CD since Lizard Vision and Paint Me On Velvet years and years ago... or maybe it just seems that way. With titles like "Buenos Dias, Budweiser", "Toast The Earth With Exxonmobile", and "We've Been Through Some Crappy Times Before", it's almost like laughing right along with these playful bluegrass buckoes live. But with nobody around to hear you, uh, I reckon.

A few days later at Waterloo Records, Joe and I became enraptured with the trippy space-synth disk being played in the store, and he also bought that, which was Spirit Animal by Pittsburgh natives Zombi, which I actually carry at my store but never had a chance to hear until that afternoon over the Waterloo speakers. Kind of thought it was maybe a Tangerine Dream album I had never heard before at first, and it was quite awesome. If you're down wit da Dream, I highly recommend.

During one afternoon on a funnybook hunt Joe and I managed to track down Austin Book and Comic (ABC) which was thoroughly amazing. The sheer size and volume of product left us both intimidated, and not even Forbidden Planet in London felt this well-stocked. Got many things there, including the most recent Buffy The Vampire Slayer (season eight, which I have been following) and this Meat Cake issue by Dame Darcy, which my local Trilogy doesn't seem to be stocking anymore. Which reminds me, I still haven't read Darcy's Gasoline that I bought for Christmas. And here I am buying more comics. There's a name for people like me. :)

Oh yeah, back at Waterloo (I'm skipping around here, I know) they have comix as well. Instead of buying music (Joe seemed to be doing well for the two of us in music and videos so I went for the reading material) I grabbed the Vol. 10 issue of MOME, which also doesn't come around my parts back home so I either have to order it or, most of the time, pick it up when I see it when I'm traveling out of town. But it always has some choice work by the likes of Sophie Crumb (yep, Robert and Aline's daughter), Dash Shaw, and the always breathtaking Jim Woodring.

Something else at Waterloo that I was extremely excited about; ever since I was a little girl I was obsessed with cryptozoology. Weird monsters formulated from old and real legends from around the world. (Anybody remember the Monster Cup Slurpee promotion that 7-Eleven had back in the 70's? I had them ALL!) There was a library book from my 5th grade school that had all kinds of drawings and backstories, from the Hippogriff to the Catoblepas (a favorite of mine, the drawing of which freaked me the fuck OUT when I was little). And although I had heard about this book Beasts! it was always in the back of my mind of track that one down someday, but I always forgot. Lo! Beasts! starin' back at me on the Waterloo endcap! With 100 pages of incredible drawings and paintings from lots of great comix and graphic artists... including a catoblepas. This monkeys gone to heaven!

Back to Austin Book and Comic (boingboingboing) I forgot to mention that I did snag two titles from Kyle Baker that have been wasting away on my wish list for eons. Namely his two classics, Why I Hate Saturn, a satire on 1980's dating rituals...

And his first grand outing, The Cowboy Wally Show, a hilarious spoof on the entertainment industry (which I am reading right now). Gads, I don't know why I have been putting off Baker's work for all these years. I think in the past I used to skim through it and be put off by the art, which had an almost photorealist style that I wasn't into at the time. Reading it now, I'm almost envious of how he manages to create so much humor and emotion with so little facial expression. It's so opposite of my own style, and yet so akin to my own humor. I love it. Sorry I ever doubted, Kyle! You've made a fangrrl fer life.

And I meant to mention DVDs, which Joe bought quite a few at Waterloo's impressive selection. But I was stoked to finally have my own (Criterion!) copy of Samuel Fuller's White Dog, which was made back in 1981 but shelved all throughout the 1980's and never shown in the United States until it was released on video in 1990 or around that time. Shelved mostly for its controversial content, about an African American animal trainer (Paul Winfield) trying to rehabilitate a white German Shepard that was trained to kill black people, it was a parable about racism in America that was considered too intense for its time. I figured I'd get it now, seeing as how it will probably go out of print and become extremely rare again. And Joe is a rabid Samuel Fuller fan, so we both win on this one.

Toys! How can I forget the toys! Joe and I always swear that we'll never get another toy again with our house packed with them as it is, but there was a glass case at Terra Toys with all these wonderful replicas of vintage tin wind-ups and friction motor toys that Joe couldn't resist getting this sweet retro Rocket Racer friction motor vehicle, which I can't stop touching (as is evidenced by the photo). It makes me think of childhood. Of my playroom at my parents' house as a little girl, which every space on the floor covered in toys, and me stepping on this little bastards and nearly slicing my foot open each and every time. Those were the days.

And last but by no means least... lord you should have seen the look on my face when I saw the Raymond Scott Figurine sitting on the shelf at Waterloo Records. I mean, it was like somebody out there purposely held a contest to come up with an idea to Make Melissa Part With Her Last Sixty Bones As Fast As Humanly Possible, and came up with this little concept. Comes with... RAYMOND SCOTT, naturally, in a real cloth shirt and jacket (big selling point, I love action figures with real cloth clothing) and a cute little Clavivox (which Scott invented back in 1952) and comes with a CD featuring Scott demonstrating the Clavivox as well as an Electronium and the Rhythm Modulator (two more inventions of Scott's), and "The Happy Whister" from Soothing Sounds For Baby Vol. 2, and of course his classic calling card "Powerhouse", which no collection should be without. I even brought it to work today, which only one person appreciated, Raymond Scott fan that he is himself. But for now Lil' Scott sits atop my TV cabinet, one finger pointing at his Clavivox, while he beams merrily across the room at me. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Wrap It Up, I'll Fake It

There's a saying in Austin, Texas that goes something like, "Texas doesn't want to be a part of the United States, and Austin doesn't want to be a part of Texas." And in a strange way that truly sums up the sensation one experiences in this eccentric little burg, more similar to a hip east or west coast city like New York, Los Angeles, or Seattle in terms of its music scene, its ever-booming youth population, and its amazing D.I.Y. spirit, supporting local industry

Me in my hotel room in Austin, Texas on my 40th birthday. The yellow rose was a birthday gift from Joe's sister, Wendy.

with the kind of pride that makes it distinctly unique, especially for a fly-over state where Walmarts and Targets define the landscape. Not that the Walmarts and Targets aren't trying to to make their wicked way into the city limits, hovering along the city's northern borders like an enemy army.

But meeting Joe's sister Wendy was the primary purpose of our journey, and at least I know that I was about as nervous and excited to see her as she was to finally meet the brother that she has always known about, but only finally discovered this past summer. I guess in order to explain it better, Joe's mom and dad divorced when Joe was am infant and his father returned to Honduras, so Joe never got to know his father. Joe's dad married Wendy's mother, an American teaching in Tegucigalpa, and they divorced when Wendy was also an infant, returning home to Texas, and never getting to know her dad either. And Wendy has always known of Joe, but never knew how to

Hermano y hermana outside Threadgill's, under the "Howdy Hour" sign. Inside joke: Joe tends to use the word "Howdy" a lot.

track him down until, God bless the internet (not to mention both working in the field of insurance), Wendy contacted him via Myspace and the rest is, well, allllll in the future I suppose. But the gal is sweet as can be, charming, funny, and meeting her entire family (mother, step-father, other half-brother, and scads of aunts and uncles and cousins) was a bit overwhelming, but they were all so wonderfully welcoming and down-to-earth I felt immediately at home with them in Wendy's mother's house, dining on the elaborate potluck feast the whole family pitched in to make in Joe's honor. I think Joe was kind of intimidated, as anyone might feel being a tad on display, but the man was a trooper and I'm extremely proud of him. I'm used to big, tight-knit families and he isn't. But Wendy is a darling, so sweet and funny and cute as a box of buttons, and really made us feel like her family was our family too. Thank-yew, Wendy!

While we spend our days with Joe's sis, we mostly spent our evenings hanging with our old friend Randy, who has been living on and off in Austin ever since around 1995 and he and his fiance Liz just re-moved down there late last year and it's always a hoot to goof off with those two, no matter what town we're all squatting in at the moment. And let me just state, that if there were ever a reason I would make my permanent home in Austin other than obviously being in the splendid company of Wendy, Liz and Randall, it would be the magnificence that is the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, the kind of

Joe with Lizzie (in red coat) and Randy (down low in wheelchair) in front of my new Mecca, the Alamo Drafthouse Theater on 6th Street.

movie theater that I would run if I, well, ran a movie theater. The first night in town Randy was eager to take us to see Master Pancake Theater, which is much like Austin's once-a-month answer to Mystery Science Theater 3000 with three guys sitting low on the stage under the movie screen riffing on some modern classic of terrible cinema -- in Friday night's case, The Matrix, which I only saw once in the theater back when it came out and boy, I thought it was terrible then! And these guys were fantastic! Absolutely hysterical, and in many cases even better than some of the MST3K episodes I've seen (and I have seen a lot). Like most cinema drafthouses, waitresses bring you food, sodas, beer and mixed drinks, (I had a chocolate milkshake and a slice of Randy's artichoke pizza... mmmm!) but unlike most of these kind of joints the food is actually damn good. So good, in fact, that we all went back again on Monday night to see one of our favorite cult classics Get Crazy! on the big screen (which I haven't seen in nearly 15 years because I can't find my VHS copy) for more of that killer pizza. But Randy and Liz talked us into having burgers at this bar across the street and down the block called Casino El Camino, insisting that they were the best we'd ever have. And damn if they weren't right! Holy shit they were amazing! I even had a bite out of Randy's hot dog and a few of Lizzie's chili cheese fries and they were astonishing as well! Who knew bar food could be so fabulous? And the jukebox rivaled that of NYC's Mars Bar in coolness, with Joe pumping in quarters and selecting the likes of Wanda Jackson ("Mean, Mean Man"), Bad Brains ("Pay To Cum"), and Sly & The Family Stone ("Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)") although for some reason when The Raveonettes "Aly, Walk With Me" came on the volume would crank up so high during the fuzzy guitar solo bits that we couldn't stop laughing over how deafening it was. I loves me some Raveonettes, but not THAT MUCH!

A typical weekend evening on Austin's (in)famous 6th Street.

6th Street, by the way, is the heart of Austin's bar and music scene, and during the weekends police shut off automobile traffic and the club-goers wander the street, slipping from club to club, venue to venue, like pre-Katrina Bourbon Street in New Orleans. And the music is just wow, crazy loud. All up and down the street, so you only imagine how much your ears would bleed actually inside the joints, which were all packed to the gills with people... when they weren't all outside puking in the gutters. No wonder Austin ropes off the racket all onto one street in the city.

Of course here we are in one of the music capitals of the United States, and we didn't have a band lined up to see in advance. Then again Austin's music "season" doesn't officially kick in until the SXSW Festival in March, so things are a bit low key during the winter months (which have been in he 70's pretty much the entire time I was

Self explanatory! The Austin Capital building looking down Congress Avenue.

there!). But as luck would have it Joe noticed that the Austin Lounge Lizards were playing Saturday night at this wow-hella-hard-to-find cubbyhole of a club called The Cactus Cafe down near 7th Street so we dragged Wendy along, who had never even heard of them but really seemed to enjoy them as much as Joe and I did. These guys perform their own written comedic bluegrass material, but all with

Ausin Lounge Lizards at the Cactus Cafe.

tremenous musical proficiency and a great deal of good humor and fun. Having been fans of theirs for almost going on twenty years it was a blast to be in their presence at last. It would have been great to have Randy and Liz there too, but we did manage to hook up with them immediately after the gig to see Bobcat Goldthwait at the Capital City Comedy Club, where he totally slayed. Liz was laughing so hard she was bent over the table and I kept holding her hand to make sure she wasn't going to pass out! The again the amount of white russians and pink lemonades she and Randy had that night might have had something to do with it as well.

Joe standing under the Terra Toys sign.

Aside from shows, one really can't go to Austin and not shop their fool head off. Fool head that I have, I'm pretty glad I left the last two days in town to put the most significant dent in my credit cards as far as hauling loot home with me. Joe and I went out scouting for comic book stores Saturday afternoon, and Wendy took us to a cool little hardware store called Zingers as well as the nearby toy store Terra Toys (photo above) and a video store called Encore, which had a decent selection of music and DVDs, although most of them were rentals. Liz and Randy took us to Waterloo Records, Cheapo Records (Joe and I loved Randy's copy of the first Fuck Emo's album he was playing in the car that we were on the hunt to find a copy for ourselves) and finally got to try some Amy's Ice Cream, which is know to be the best in Texas (the Mexican Vanilla is so sinfully rich you can eat it by itself with nothing on it).

The coves around Lake Travis near sunset, as viewed from our table at the Oasis Restaurant

patio, with the multi-million dollar homes along the coastline.

The only time I had anything resembling mediocre food in the entire city was actually on purpose, because although The Oasis isn't know for its soaring cuisine, it comes with probably the best view in all of Austin. This towering restaurant perched on the bluff of the mountains overlooking Lake Travis has level after level of outdoor patio seating where you can eat, drink, and watch the sun go

Catchya on the flip, sunshine...

down behind the mountain range along Lake Travis. The current drought in Austin has left the water levels a little low in the lake, but you could see sandbars, and a solitary sailboat out on the surface as the sun continued to dip down in the sky, and when the very last

sliver o' sun is no longer seen, the bartenders ring their bar bells signaling sundown, and the restaurant diners all clap.... er, for some reason. What a beautiful sight to behold while eating bland veggie burgers in a town where people really do seem to know how to enjoy themselves.

Super trip. And superb company. My thanks to Wendy and Randy and Lizzie for being such fine ambassadors and hosts, and all-around fantabulous peoples. I can't wait to go back again. Maybe some day when Master Pancake Theater does The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, or when The Raveonettes actually play in town and make my brain dissolve when they're not on the Casino El Camino jukebox at top volume.

All the good stuff I got on my shopping spree will be the next blog entry. Stay tuned!

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On

First 20 tracks on my (New! Birthday!) iPod shuffle downloading a photo I took of comedian Bobcat Goldthwait at the Capital City Comedy Club in Austin, moments before he called me out for taking it. (Oopsie!)

1. "Oh Babe What Would You Say" - Hurricane Smith
2. "Call Me Phantom" - Celebrity Murder Party
3. "Monica" - The Kinks
4. "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore" - Gilbert & Sullivan
5. "Psycho Repairman" - The Humpers
6. "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" - The Dandy Warhols
7. "House Of The Juju Queen" - Janie Jones
8. "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In)" - Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
9. "A Equals A" - Zoogz Rift
10. "Baby" - Monolux
11. "Bam-Bam" - Luscious Jackson
12. "Very Metal Noise Pollution" - Pop Will Eat Itself
13. "Smash The System" - Consolidated
14. "Just The Way You Are" - Barry White
15. "I Love You" - The Pipettes
16. "First Time" - The Boys
17. "1000x No" - Pop Will Eat Itself
18. "Get Your Filthy Hand Off My Desert" - Pink Floyd
19. "What Becomes Of The Broken-Hearted" - The Backbeats
20. "I'll Go Crazy" - James Brown

Banjo Players In Heaven

Got back into town at a nice, reasonable hour. Enough time to swing by work to pick up my schedule and hit up the local Vietnamese place for my favorite bowl o' pho. Which is probably the healthiest thing I ate the entire week I was in Austin, save for that veggie burger at Oasis... and maybe the grilled chicken and lettuce leaves at 219 West... although the tacos al pastor at Curra's Grill were scrumptious.... and the artichoke pizza at the Alamo Drafthouse was mindbending (more on that place later!)... and by far one of the best hamburgers I've had in my life was at Casino El Camino (featured on the Food Network for their burgers, as a matter of fact)... so on top of the brisket and sausages and rhubarb pies at Joe's sister's mother's house it's safe to say that not only did I probably gain back every ounce I carefully lost over the last two months, but I put my stomach through every possible prandial test this week and I STILL have no idea why my stomach decides to cramp up on me for no identifiable reason. It only hurt bad twice -- last night and Saturday -- and was a little twitchy here and there but nothing to incapacitate me. I managed to get around and have fun and do a lot of nifty things, all of which I will expound upon in the next few blog entries as I upload my photos. For now, I'm exhausted, and I have my follow-up appointment with my doctor tomorrow to find out what they discovered with the test they ran on me last week. I think I'm more excited about that than being back in my own cozy bed again, with my bear and my bedsheets.

I'm back! For what it's worth. *bats eyes*

40

I'm off to Texas, peoples. Be back on the evening of the 25th.

Be good!

Metamucil And Sympathy

My doctor has put me on the BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast) which is low-fiber, easy to digest, and bland as all get-out. But her concern is to keep me from getting too dehydrated running in and out of the ladies room every hour, until she can determine whether or not my stomach pains are due to my raw vegan diet, the medications I take on top of all that, or if I merely have the stomach virus that's been going around town these days (both my parents and my brother are just coming off the flu themselves).

Immediately going onto BRAT my stomach started feeling much better, although there is still a hint of pain there, especially this morning when I woke up and went to run some errands. I'm on Aleve right now and if the pain increases I may have to call out tomorrow from work (I already had yesterday and today off via doctor's note) because it is really, really important that I make myself well enough to go on this trip to Austin this Friday.

And my test results probably won't be in until I get back from Austin, so I won't really know what's wrong with me until I return, unless maybe I call the doctor while I'm out of town, which I should probably do anyway. Right now the doc just wants me to reintroduce fruits and vegetables slow and gradual, stopping when my stomach reacts again, and lay off my metformin and my fish oil supplements for a week.

The diet is a thundering bore. But I'm enjoying the not bending in half in agony for the time being. Man, I never did like applesauce. On potato latkes, yum-yum. By itself or with white toast and rice? Guh-guuuuhhh. Never thought I'd get sick of bananas.

Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth

Last night's Audio Junk appears to be up and ready for download, so get your fix of funk-industrial-hardcore-mash-upyness with a pinch of A Face In The Crowd to grown on. Audio Junk is live every Tuesday night at 8pm EST on Random Radio, except I guess for next week, when I assume we'll be in Texas. Oopsie!

Decisions

I'm going to have to go to the doctor tomorrow morning. I just don't know what else to do about my pains. I was convinced that I was having a hard time with the cacao powder, so I cut that out of my diet. But I'm still sick every single day, in some form or fashion. The last two days I ate cooked, not-at-all-healthy food, just to see if my body would stop killing me because I wasn't forcing harsh, cruciferous vegetation into my intestines for 48 hours, and although it levelled off a touch, the ache still never completely, 100% went away. I was in agony all night at work, but after 3 Aleves and a thoroughly disgusting #2 Value Meal at McDonald's, my body has stopped eating me from the inside out. And I don't know what to do about it.

If I can't eat healthy food, how am I going to get healthy? I can't go back to eating trash again, and no doctor in their right mind would advise that anyway. But I'm going to Texas this week. Joe's sister's family is planning a huge feast for us Sunday night, and Randy is taking us out to some of the best eateries in Austin. I don't know how I'm going to survive all that. I'm terrified to put anything near my mouth as it is. I'm scared of the queasy plane ride. I'm scared of spending every day and night in Austin moaning in a fetal position in my hotel room. I'm scared that I won't be able to not stay five steps away from a toilet at all times. I'm just... scared of all that, I guess.

Worst of all, I'm feeling like an utter failure. I was doing so well. I was so proud of myself. I loved every minute of feeling healthy and strong and awake, of losing weight and obsessing over new recipes and shopping at the Heritage and just really enjoying myself for a change. And God, that greasy fast food felt so hideous sliding down my throat, like a salty slug. I can't eat junk food. And now, I can't eat healthy food. I... Christ. I need to go to bed before I start crying.

Shit, too late.

Personal Effects

I wish I knew why I was so sick all the time.

Every day for nearly a week, it's been either agonizing cramps or (like yesterday) queasiness and nausea... or just a general inability to get off the throne for days on end (like this morning, as a result from yesterday).

How can this be my diet? How can eating fresh fruits and vegetables be bad for you? I even broke down last night and ate a pint of ice cream, just to see how my body handled junk food again, and I still felt sick, only this time with dairy and sugar on the stomach, which is worse.

Yesterday I felt sick after eating a raw lunch from The Heritage of eggplant parmesan (the "cheese" made primarily out of cashews) so I'm wondering if it was some type of food poisoning. This all makes me realize how much I need to get back to basics with all this, like it was when I first started out doing the raw/vegan thing: Keep it simple. No more fancy this-and-that's. "Mono meals", as the rawists call them. Bananas for breakfast. Broccoli for lunch. Etc. etc. That seemed to work best for me in the early weeks, and quite frankly I kind of missed it.

I feel okay this morning, aside from running to the ladies room a lot due to being sick yesterday. At least I don't have to call out from work, which I was dreading since they took away my sick days. I just don't want this sick thing to become the daily habit that it already is. I don't want to be sick when I'm in Austin next week. I wish I knew who to go to about these things who would know.

When The Weather's Just Right...

Top 20 tracks on my iTunes sitting here looking over the photos of the harbor seals I took this morning outside the Virginia Aquarium.

1. "Looking For Someone" - 8 Eyed Spy
2. "Love Jones" - Brighter Side Of Darkness
3. "The World Is Going Wrong" - Mississippi Sheiks
4. "Peter Gunn" - Henry Mancini
5. "Christian Militia" - New Model Army
6. "Ghosts: Second Variation" - Albert Ayler Trio
7. "The Herd" - Wipers
8. "High Water Everywhere Pt. 1" - Charley Patton
9. "Brotherman" - Final Solution
10. "By The Time I Get To Arizona" - Public Enemy

11. "Candy Man" - Rising Sons

12. "Inspiration" - D.R.I.

13. "New Friend Request" - Gym Class Heroes

14. "Let's Get Down" - Tony Toni Tone

15. "Holiday" - Get-Up Kids

16. "Night And Day" - Ella Fitzgerald

17. "So What" - Miles Davis Sextet

18. "Mama Tierra" - B-Negão, Macaco & Nazão Zumbi

19. "Dino" - Harmonia

20. "Big Girl" - Ghostface Killah

Schedule

Sat 14: 9-5
Mon 16: 4-cl
Tue 17: 4-cl
Wed 18: 9-5
Thur 9:30-5

Rub Me To Sleep Again

Yesterday's Audio Junk is up, and features clips from In A Lonely Place, Conan, NWA, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and music by Andre Cymone, Dalek, Soul Children, Soul Deviants, and more. Audio Junk is weekly -- TUEADAY NIGHTS LIVE at 8pm EST on randomradioonline.net.

I've Been Told This Is Good For Me

The Friday Five, three days late:


1. What activity can you not believe you survived in your childhood?

Probably all the goofball hotdogging my girlfriends and I used to do on our skateboards and dirt bikes when we were kids, back in the 70's and early 80's. My next door neighbor's teenage son had built a halfpipe in their driveway and the girls and I would break our necks on it daily, with no kneepads or helmets or anything. Jeanne and I used to create all kinds of elaborate ramps and obstacle courses in her driveway and tear the flesh off of each other's faces wiping out on those things. I remember one hard fall Jeanne took on the pavement, but she got up and said she was okay. Later that night in my clubhouse (my parents' shed in the backyard) she happened to roll up her jeans leg and saw her calves covered in dried, caked-on blood that she wasn't even aware that she'd done to herself during the crash.


2. What activity can you not believe kids get away with today?

Christ, just going to school every day. And I used to think I had it bad in my day.


3. If you could be anyone else in the world live or dead, who would you choose to be?

Today I'll go ahead and say Ellen Forney, because she's doing exactly what I have always wanted to do since I was a little girl. I admire her greatly.


4. A lot of people think they've been in love at 15 or 16 years old, do you think you now look back and think you were a stupid kid or do you believe that you were old enough to know what love is?

It's not something I talk about often, but when I was twelve years old I "fell in love" with a comic book character and it was the first time that I had ever felt anything even remotely close to what adults call romantic love at that tender age. Was it really love? Couldn't really say. Can you really fall in love with something that's not real? Nonetheless, I spent years of my teenage life pining for something I could never have, existing in moments like Christopher Reeve in Somewhere In Time trying to get into that world I could never be in, being the prototype of every man I would find attractive later in life... so maybe it was more just childhood obsession than anything. Compared to the real relationship I have now, it was nowhere near the real, adult love that I've come to know now. Plus it's easier than making out with newsprint, and believe it or not, less messier.


5. Do you think it is possible to remain in love with someone you once loved, but haven't seen in a year?

Sure, I suppose. Unless that person's changed a whole hell of a lot in one year.

Will Never Play In Great Bridge

Sunday morning and no tummyache.

Spring is starting to feel like it's just around the bend.

This is the perfect morning for a little Sun Ra.



I'm all in tune with the cosmos now and shit.

Woot! Gonna have me some papaya for breakfast.

In A Sentimental Mood

Was supposed to go to a Dr. Horrible Supervillain party this evening, but I feel a lot more comfortable sitting here right now hoping that Joe makes it home in his unpredictable car instead. Plus, I never got a chance to design my supervillain costume.

So I'm staying home and watching episodes of the Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog on youtube, wishing someday some gay supervillain would fall in love with me in a laundromat and offer me the keys to a shiny new Australia.



Some things just feel so right.

Pass The Hatchet

One of the more troubling things about being on a very strict, unconventional diet is that when something inside your body isn't reacting the way it should, it's often hard to tell what could be causing it due to the fact that you're eating so many different foods and combinations of foods, as well as them being raw a majority of the time, sometimes it's hard to pin down. Take, for instance, my case this week...

Or rather it all kind of started about two weeks ago, when I arrived at work at 8am with a terrible stomach cramp that made me feel as if I might not be able to make it through the day, until I remembered that I had a bottle of Aleve in my desk and about 20 minutes later it felt a bit better. Now it's been nearly three times this week that I have had some stomach issues and I haven't been able to determine yet what might be causing them. Potential culprits could be:

Spirulina: The Heritage doesn't seem to have this high protein pond scum in any other form other than supplement capsules, and it says I have to take SIX of them in one serving! Is that actually necessary or is this the company's fiendish plot to make you go through more capsules and pay another small fortune for a weensy 'lil bottle? I went the newbie route and bought the smaller, 15-day bottle and took my first six (gulp, bleh) on Wednesday morning. Felt fine, although my stomach was making some alarmingly loud noises by mid afternoon.

Salad dressing: This week I experimented with some raw tahini, water, fresh lemon juice, and a small avocado in the blender and came up with an amazingly delicious salad dressing that I had twice this week. And each time that I had a salad for dinner Wednesday and lunch Thursday, shortly after, my stomach started feeling ucky. Not the crampy pain ucky of two weeks ago, but enough to make me want to lie down until the queasiness subsided. Was the raw tahini bad? Does tahini go bad? There was no expiration date on the jar. And not too long ago I had made a similar salad dressing without the avocado and I felt just fine. The avo was fresh, and so were the lemons. Now, I had spirulina earlier those days as well. Could it be the dressing? Or the spirulina? Or both combined?

Cacao powder: Friday morning at work I suffered another agonizing stomach cramp, which I cured with a dose of Aleve that got me through the day. Not the queasiness of the dressing, but a cramp much like the one two weeks ago. This time, I'm betting on the cacao powder that I sheepishly admit to probably overusing in my diet each week. I've grown quite addicted to the morning smoothie of strawberries, spinach, and a tablespoon of cacao powder, and cacao is a "superfood" as well as a stimulant, something that should be used in moderation. And godbessit, some days I really need the taste of chocolate, since I'm quitting coffee and sugar and I gotta have something to replace that morning high. Well, I probably don't gotta, but my body does tolerate stimulants generally well since I usually had coffee most days when I have to work early in the mornings. Most mornings with cacao go peachy, but what did I have for breakfast that morning two weeks ago? I can't remember. And I did have spirulina as well. No salad dressing. Hm.

I was feeling kinda blah when I woke up this morning, hungry but not hungry at the same time, and I felt the urge to eat cooked food today. I had Chinese take-out with my parental units last night (stir-fried veggies over white rice -- livin' on the EDGE!), so maybe that was why I was feeling gross in the early hours. I decided that today: No cacao powder. No spirulina. And I threw out the rest of that salad dressing. I had some cold deli sandwiches I bought at the Heritage yesterday so I ate the cooked hummus wrap for breakfast and the cooked vegan burrito for lunch, then dinner was baked spaghetti squash. And I felt good all day. I even took the spirulina supplements with my dinner A.) to see if taking them with food helps digestion, and B.) I still need protein and all that. Now at 9:15pm Saturday night (I know this blog post is a day early but I started it yesterday and only got around to finishing it tonight) I'm feeling A-okay. And maybe tomorrow I'll try to make another tahini salad dressing with some Joyva brand tahini I've had unopened in my pantry, which I'm assuming isn't raw but I think I just want to make sure that I'm not developing some kind of allergic reaction to sesame seeds (I have no seed allergies that I know of). I think eliminating one weirdo-food at a time might help me track down the cramping culprit. Then try and go back on more raw again tomorrow.

I've decided in moments of weakness it's foolish to beat myself up for not sticking to my own rules, especially when one of my rules was to follow my body and do what it tells me to do in terms of good health. I'm not going to be the kind of strict foodie nerd that feels guilty every time she has an avocado like one would have a slice of cake -- an avocado, for chrissakes. I'm still learning, and I'm still in that zone and I want to stay in that zone while the zone is still, uh, all zoney and I'm clear and focused and excited about all this.

Tomorrow's another day, and tonight I'm soaking some goji berries for what I hope will be part of my salad tomorrow that won't kill me. Wish me luck!

Schedule

Fri 6: 9-5
Sat 7: 9-5
Sun 8: 11-5
Mon 9: 4-cl
Wed 11: 9-5
Thur 12: 5-cl
Sat 14: 9-5

Songs The Lord Taught Us

First 20 tracks on my iTunes sitting here wondering by what exquisitely violent means I could destroy this clock that the company gave me for "five years of loyal service" until resigning to the fact that sadly I really do kind of need another clock around the house.

1. "Nylon Smile" - Portishead

2. "Let Me In (live October 21 2001)" - R.E.M.

3. "Delirious" - Prince

4. "Aaj Ki Raat" - Sonu Nigam, Mahalaxmi Lyer & Alisha Chinoi

5. "Smash Your Head" - Girl Talk

6. "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" - Wanda Jackson

7. "Blows Of The Fist" - SPK

8. "Breathe" - The Cure

9. "Stormy" - Wipers

10. "Way Down Now" - World Party

11. "Welcome To Jamrock" - Damien Marley

12. "Standing In The Way Of Control" - The Gossip

13. "All I Need" - Method Man

14. "Superfunkycalifragisexy" - Prince

15. "Page 4" - Fantômas

16. "Back In The Saddle" - Aerosmith

17. "The Way I Walk" - Robert Gordon

18. "Refeer Man" - Baron Lee

19. "Living (Dedicated to Julian Beck)" - Cecil Taylor

20. "City Of New Orleans" - Arlo Guthrie

To All You Party Gladiators Out There...

Got some crunk Audio Junk forya truck.... the Feb. 3 ep is up, with tracks from Les Baxter, The Tubes, the theme song from Buck Rogers, Humphrey Bogart dialogue from In A Lonely Place, and much more. Audio Junk is LIVE LIVE LIVE every Tuesday night at 8pm on randomradioonline.net. Tap the bottle and twist the cap.

Lux Interior, 1948-2009

I think the first song by The Cramps I ever herd was "Human Fly", back around 1987, after years of staring warily at their many lurid album covers in local record stores, wondering what the hell this band was all about. And everything I heard from them since then was positively smashing. Their version of "She Said" made me seek out albums by Hasil Adkins (former Cramps drummer, the wonderful Miriam Linna and co-founder of Norton Records, sent me a Hasil record with his original version on it, thinking I might like it better than the one I was initially looking for... and she was right!) and I finally got to see The Cramps live in 1993 at the Boathouse, which was probably still to this day the largest grouping of familiar faces from the local scene I had ever witness at a live show. And probably my all-time favorite band interview ever is the one with Lux Interior and Cramps lead guitarist Poison Ivy in their home surrounded by their music collection in RE/Search's Incredibly Strange Music Vol. 1, which brought back so many memories of Joe and me back in college, traveling around looking for records, our car loaded up with music, eager to get back home and listen to it all. Lux was my kinda guy. I could relate to him. He seemed like good people.

Tributes, all around. An early Cramps performance in 1978 at the Napa State Mental Hospital in California. I'd say it was one of the strangest audiences I'd ever seen for a show if I hadn't have seen some allegedly sane people behavior at a variety of other gigs from my past.



And to round things out, a later music video from the 1990's called "Bikini Girls With Machine Guns" which actually topped at #10 on the US Modern Rock Charts.



R.I.P. Lux my Love. Thanks for the good times and memories.

xxx

Bartytown

I love Spike Jones. I love Perez Prado.

So why have I never even known about this?



These are the kind of showdowns that take place behind my eyelids every night when I go to sleep. And sometimes even during my waking hours, too. If I weren't so tired right now, I'd do the rumba (my excuse for everything!)