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July 31, 2003
oregon wedding pictures
most of you who read this won't care because you don't know any of these people, but here are the pictures from my cousin john and katherine's wedding. if you missed me writing about it before, here is the description i gave. and here is my original post when i found out they were getting married. ho ho ho. nostalgia, that was a good post.
Posted by michele at 11:37 PM | Comments (2)
bye bye indian corn
yesterday i went swimming in kristen's pool with the coolest longest hair ever. it was all swirly like a mermaid's.
but tonight i accepted the fact that the braids were no longer fun. they were just heavy, itchy, and scalp-pulling. so i have spent the last 8 hours taking them out. a full two hours longer than it took to put them in. i kind of miss them already. but this crinkly short hair i have now is fascinating on its own too.
i'm not quite sure if something that only lasted a month was worth $200. who am i kidding? that hair was the shit. totally worth $200.
i did some fashion posing sans fancy car upholstery hair.
ok. the washing and brushing of the hair took another 2 fucking hours and i think i have lost about half my hair. i'm practically bald now! (not really though. don't take me literally. i'm not bald.)
Posted by michele at 01:16 AM | Comments (14)
July 29, 2003
the family that's unemployed together...
entering this lovely month of june the entire family was unemployed. there was me who quit, my mom who was having issues with the unified school district laying people off instead of hiring new teachers, and my brother who got laid off for no reason. or at least no reason that he or curtis is telling me.
this all changed three days ago when my mom got a phone call from her beloved elementary school about a job opening teaching a 4th grade class. mother is now gainfully employed while my brother and i continue to waste our lives away in frivolous pursuits. i don't know what his frivolity consists of. mine still consists (as we all know) of swimming, reading YA books, and watching anime.
hold your best wishes for the moms.
in other news, my brother has been offered a mistress type living situation by a sugar momma. yes, his rent and utilities would be paid and all he'd have to do is take care of the infantile appetites of anthony/chovy. yes, this sugar momma is none other than anthony's momma. ahem, let me stress this is not the sicilian. this is a friend from high school currently finishing his college career down in long beach whose mother spoils him so much that she is willing to send my brother down there to watch over him for the next 6 months until her first-born moves back up here to be under her own watchful eye. i'm kind of jealous. i want to go live in long beach for free in exchange for "looking after" that backstreet boy. hmph.
commence congratulations to the mom. yey mom for getting a job and making me look bad! yey mom! and yey adam for being offered a chance to be a kept woman! yey kept woman adam! now what shall i do for an encore?
Posted by michele at 10:18 PM | Comments (6)
how to deal
for those of you not so well versed in the current youth oriented mindless tripe, let me give you a little background on this movie.
mandy moore is a pop singer. for some reason she is now acting in movies. in her first movie, a walk to remember, she played a girl who's dying. but who can also sing very well and is quite religious. in this movie she plays a fiery spitball girl who is very, VERY cynical about love due to her parent's divorce, her best friend's boyfriend randomly collapsing from a heart defect (look out gene), and her sister marrying some preppy dweeb with an overbearing mother. but then, then, enter some boy named macon (what the hell kind of name is that? seriously? where is that from?) with very overbearing eyebrows and her whole outlook on life is changed thru the course of a collage of images being flashed across the movie screen. seriously, the editing job? it was a joke.
this movie....well...it was terrible. but in a delightfully enjoyable way wherein i continually had to grope erica's leg while trying desperately not to snort while giggling.
#1 mandy ass moore is adorable. and makes lovely fashion statements all the time. she's like a little fashion plate of cuteness. such pretty skin and pouting lips.
#2 this macon character is a neanderthal. played by trent ford with little to no acting ability. he's not ugly though. and i guess that's all they were looking for. ahem in his bio section on imdb he says the following as a personal quote: "There are certain people you cherish really, really dearly. You want to rip your chest open and bleed warmth for them." which almost beats my favorite line of his from the movie, "i suck with words." a truly fascinating image.
#3 the best friend who gets pregnant by the deceased boyfriend is an interesting case because teen pregnancy is no joke and yet there was mandy ass moore encouraging it. plus the preggers girl said that she knew what she was giving up by keeping the kid. she knows what she's "giving up"? it's her whole future life, she has no fucking clue. sure she'll probably be a wonderful mother, but she can't know what she's giving up. not really. that pissed me off.
#4 halley (mandy moore's character) and macon have this whole "jedi mind trick" in-joke thing. it is incredibly dumb.
#5 the music. the music was interesting. in three instances primarily. first was at the funeral for the heart defect guy (this, let me stress, was a completely random occurrence where he just dropped dead suddenly with no warning. hella confusing.) anyway at his funeral they play his fave song which is "doooooo you realize....dooooo you realize you have the most beautiful face in the world...." which is kind of laughable at the time. since it ends up with mandy moore out in the rain by herself lifting up her face to the camera while holding the funeral hand-out which has the boyfriend's face prominently on it. but we are not looking at that, oh no, but at her beautiful face. to remind us that even though this boy has randomly died, he is not this movie's center and we should stop caring about him and look at mandy moore again and then whoosh edit cut to her dad's wedding. which introduces the second delightful lyrical accompaniment which is the donna's song, "you're the kind of guy who needs attention" which fits in well with her mid-life crisis wacky father who is a dj and marrying the leggy blonde traffic reporter from the station. lastly is the fact that liz phair's new single, which erica has complained about already, is included in this movie. which just goes to show even more that liz phair is a sell-out attempting a career rejuvenation by appealing to teenagers.
i enjoyed this movie. i didn't like it. i wouldn't recommend it. but i enjoyed watching it with erica. kisses.
p.s. i love this poster. because it makes me scream out, "allison janney, what are you DOING?" and "a lesson in love for the non-believer"? tripe!
Posted by michele at 09:43 PM | Comments (1)
July 28, 2003
liggity lame and loving it
holy crap i just managed to answer some of my email. it was harrrrrrd. i am so lazy. i finished card captor sakura though. the series (both seasons) and the 2 movies. streeeeeeeettttch. man that was a lot of time spent on the couch. i actually had an email checking on my welfare. ahem.
"Babe, sushi is starting to scare me. I can't believe you watched anime for 12 hours. Actually, I can. The scary prospect is that you're going to do the same thing the next day. (Maybe you're actually watching anime now and this little prophecy is being fulfilled?) I mean come on here. The light of day; it's nice; it's pretty.
but then pandas unite* also expressed joy in my ability to waste away on the couch. i just don't know who to believe anymore. however for all of you alls info, i actually did leave my house today and spent a good three hours in the sun over in kristen's parent's pool. where i was terrified into gibbering insensibility by the 3-d fish toilet seat cover in the bathroom. that thing is creepy, i tell you. every time it gets me. every time.
however, lest you be deceived that i was doing some good being out in the world and not subjecting my pea-brain to elementary school children's animated antics, let me inform you i was re-reading the princess diaries books. yes, the ones that disney based the movie on. yes, the ones sweeping the young adult nation. yes, the ones which make me so happy i could squidge like an otter. i've read now, all of her YA series. the one about the girl that gets hit by lightening,** the one about the girl who can see ghosts, and the one about the girl who is a princess. i'm still waiting on getting the one about the girl who saves the life of the president. but don't you worry. i'm getting there. and they're all so good! and funny! and intelligent! seriously!
i have no shame. NO SHAME.
*pandas unite is the name of the bowling team that susan d and company had/have in tacoma. she told me about it once. i was very impressed. i even bought a shirt from goodwill that had pandas on it and wore it in secret support.
** holy crap! they have a tv series based on the lightening girl ones starting this saturday!!! who couldn't be more excited!? hmm....just watched the preview for it and it looks like shit that has completely deviated from the books. kind of like the damn disney movie did with the princess diaries. heh. i will still watch though. oh yes. because i am just that lame.
Posted by michele at 11:50 PM | Comments (6)
bad boys 2
this movie is offensive on many levels. but all the same it is very enjoyable. but possibly that is because i am like a slippery duck whose wet back is un-insulted by racial slurs (having nothing to do with my racial-ness anyway so i couldn't logically be offended in the first place) and homosexual taunts (to which i could be vaguely offended if i wanted to be, but am mostly willing to extemporize that it was all in good fun, joking wise).
i watched the original bad boys movie recently while i was up in oregon in prep for going to see this one. so i count myself as up on the little in-jokes between the two films. of which there are several. pretty much just between the two main male leads and their convos with one another. and they are funny, oh yes. will smith is way more funny though. just so we're clear.
they mention 9/11 in this movie. which startled me. i'm not sure why, other than the obvious that this is a very fictional place where even though a cop car can roll over and over and completely blow up--no cops ever DIED. fictional though, see, means that the advent of something wholly real is a little disconcerting to the viewer who is prepared for laughably ludicrous stunts and dialogue. there's a bullet-time sequence during the opening ku klux klan number when you actually get to watch the bullet enter some guy's neck and the blood comes out and everything. that is some sick (in a good way) shit. i fucking love bullet-time.
another thing that gave me pause was the number of instances where they say "shit" or "fuck" and the fact that the entire row in front of me was full of african american children under the age of 10 who would giggle wildly at the naughtiness of it all. who brings small children to such explicit films? is the fact that there's two role model type specimens of the race starring in this big blockbuster type thing which makes it feasible to expose your children to dirty language in order for them to see black men succeeding in some industry? because that just doesn't seem right.
there are three car chases in this movie. three. was one enough? i think so. the first one had the bad guys flinging cars for them to dodge, the second one had dead bodies falling out of a truck--none of which they managed to dodge, really the third chase was just gratuitous. and speaking of unnecessary, in the morgue there is a dead naked girl with big breasts. which we get to look at quite up-close. fer fuck's sake. it is the only naked breast scene in the movie. and they had to be dead? and jiggly? why? whyyyyy?
there's this scene where will smith and martin lawrence have a heart-to-heart moment which sounds very much like they're talking about their gay relationship and is supposed to be funny as a mis-heard thing. and it is funny. but it's also kind of insulting. although, will smith telling lawrence, "you can't say the word 'flacid' to me," is pretty funny. but some black woman saying to them later, "you two motherfuckers need jesus." as in "jesus" will save you from being "gay", or at least i think that's what they were trying to imply. that's not ok. also of the ku klux klan, "a bunch of men, hugging and kissing, that's some cult shit."
ahem, lastly, if i was a rat i might be insulted by this movie. but again, i am not a rat, so i am ok with this. they're pretending to be pest control guys to get into this one house (will smith, mind, is still wearing his HUGE diamond post earrings which probably cost thousands upon thousands of dollars) and lawrence is trying to convince this guy that the rats are merely worker bees and that they are "the explorers of the rat world. they're just looking for rat pussy." to which i was pretty amused. as were the small children in front of me. then he sees some rats having sex missionary style and is exclaiming to smith on their walkie talkies, "they fuck just like us!" in a revolted-fascinated voice. as if he's not sure whether to be pleased that they copy us or horrified that maybe we copied them.
for all of being 2.5 hours long, this movie is really good if you like explosions and buddy humor with both misogynistic and homosexual undertones. good times. i particularly enjoyed it because i snuck in for free after another film. free=good.
Posted by michele at 11:02 PM | Comments (1)
July 27, 2003
false pretenses
since i got back from oregon i have been spending a lot lot lot of time watching japanese animation. my dialogue skills are being reduced to mini exclamations about things being "cute" or "sweet" or "yes" or "no" this is due to my japanese being not that great. in addition to my advent into japanese baby talk my ability to speak english cohesively is also going down the drain. i have taken to yelling at the screen. if you can call chortling and rolling around on the couch as a substitute for "yelling." mostly my tv conversations go a little something like this:
"no! no, but oh that is so cute. oh you're just so cute! give her the bear. no! ahhh....so cute! blush some more!" (this to a 5th grade character)
"he's not...no! what are you stupid? he's malevolent! evil. look at him. those glasses. evil i tell you evil. you can tell, violin music everytime he comes on. eeee-heeee-heee-heee violin! hand kissing! oh oh my! evil! evil!" (this about another 5th grade character)
"jump him! holy shit! you're both so hot! would you just spit out that you love him and then make out?! crapity crap! monkeys! crap! hot! oh god. sweet jesus." (this to her older brother who is a high school senior and his best friend who is also a senior as well as being the false form of this moon warrior guy and her love interest when he's pretending to be human. this is complicated.)
i've been watching this for several days now. there's 8 dvds which are...um about 3-4 hours each i think and then 2 movies. i am on the 7th dvd. i seriously watched from noon till midnight today. this is getting obsessive. i'm already contemplating what series i will begin rewatching after i finish this one. i am totally procrastinating getting anything done. i'm not even looking for a job. i'm not even writing any thesis papers for grad school apps. i hardly bother replying to emails. i look at who's calling on my phone very carefully and spend an inordinate amount of time deciding if i really want to answer it. recluse city, here i come. you might think this is a cry for help. that i want someone to save me from the room, the couch, and the dvd's. but really i am heartily enjoying myself and would have to be dragged out kicking and screaming.
anyway, my show aimed at elementary school children beckons. peace out.
Posted by michele at 11:53 PM | Comments (1)
tomb raider 2: the cradle of life
angelina jolie is hot-to-to-to-to-ooooooo. this movie is semi-dumb.
i really like the first one. because angelina goes around kicking so much ass and looking so good. she looks good in this one too. and kicks ass. but...she's more subdued. there's less of the acerbic in her tone of voice. there's more of the depressing, "oh...do i have to kill you? oh but...oh...." it's like, woman, get on with it. he's not that great. in fact he is scum! (this is in reference to the mercenary love interest.) the whole storyline of things being not alike but coming in pairs. ie, you can have a soul mate and not actually love him/her was interesting, but when it comes at the price of one of them wanting to kill all of the human race i think you kind of drop the whole soul mate nonsense by the wayside.
the other moral thread in this movie was the "everything lost is meant to be found"/"not everything is meant to be found" issue. these are things lara croft says at disparate times of the film. obviously at key moments to highlight her growth as a tomb-raiding individual. enough already. we don't need her to have morals. she's better without them. kick more ass, have more illicit sexual encounters--or any for that matter, kill more bad guys. do SOMETHING productive.
this movie goes from one country to the next like a board hopping game of risk. they even went to kazahkstan. i was briefly thrilled. while at the same time couldn't help internally screaming, "siam is the key! the key to austrialia! go little guys, go! spend the night!" and along with country traveling like a lark in springtime, the plot also jumps from one piece of info to another. oh there's a temple underwater? oh this is the map to pandora's box? oh pandora's box is where? oh the bad guys are here. oh let me save the day.
it's all very amusing stunts-wise and some of the dialogue is snappy. but mostly it's derivative. i am mildly depressed by this as i was so looking forward to it. maybe i'll change my mind upon a second viewing. i really do like the first one. and she does look really good.
Posted by michele at 11:22 PM | Comments (5)
July 25, 2003
wedding the second
people keep asking me how the second wedding was, how the trip to oregon was, how all my relatives was. and i keep saying, "good." "fine." "it was nice." i really didn't have anything further to say. i feel like i was being rude, because it was rude, but honestly, nothing else much to say about it. but i'm going to try now to say something.
seriously, watching your cousin get married is WEIRD. i mean it was great and i was grinning the whole time, but still. they are so in love and so perfect and it was so wonderful to watch them get married. but it's kind of terrifying too because in the same sense that it is inspiring it's also deflating since the whole effort of finding someone like that seems insurmountable. i am horrified to think of watching my brother get married. especially after he said to me, "if natalie wasn't crazy we'd probably be married by now." i almost shat myself.
6 roles of film later (3 taken by me) and what is there to show for it? only 4 pictures of yours truly. 4. out of 6 roles. that's just pathetic. and 2 of them are terrible, one of them you can't see my face, and the other one looks funny (because it's black and white). i'm too lazy to scan them all now. and i'm not going to scan them all anyway because that's too many pictures. but i'll put up some in a while for you to see. there's some cute ones of the couple and then also of my little cousins.
mostly what i have to say about this latest trip to the northwest is that it was long. i read like 12 books, went to two movies, ate out a lot, and sat around a lot in some crazy oregon heat wave.
by the time the wedding finally rolled around on friday i felt we had been there enough time for 5 weddings to have come and gone. it was beautiful how short and pretty and sincere their ceremony was though. and then it was just food, party, dance, sit, talk. well, plus, all the set up and take down of the chairs, the decorations, etc.
one valuable lesson i have learned here: never, EVER, agree to do any sort of set up for weddings again. i can't imagine being in the wedding party is much better either. stress level is too high. coming just for the wedding and leaving whenever you want seems a much better way to go. (just in case katherine or john reads this or james tells them about it, i certainly didn't MIND doing the decorations. it wasn't HARD or anything. and i love you guys, don't get me wrong. just never again.)
ahem. and now that i have placed the foot firmly in the craw, i am going to end this.
Posted by michele at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
the league of extraordinary gentleman
i kind of wish i hadn't seen this movie. except for how i went to a matinee and didn't have to pay for my own ticket. so really i just wasted time of my life. and it wasn't a complete drag i guess. just mostly.
this movie is kind of cool with all the literary figures and the completely inappropriate items in the time period setting and the complete suspension of reality (does the invisible man walk around in the mongolian arctic wastelands while it's snowing completely naked and not get frostbite? yes, he does. and boy was i ever mad about it.)
other things i didn't like:
in the previews the one woman on the team says that line, "and women" when someone says, "oh-ho-ho so this is the league of extraordinary gentleman." (or something to that effect). in the movie itself though, i'm pretty sure she never says that. am i wrong? i can't remember now but i am pretty sure it didn't happen. which is irritating because you think, 'oh they're going to provide some semblance of feminism to this rudely titled movie.' but then, it just doesn't happen and then also the one female character is the only one who kills violently and for the fun of it. also the one who gets her emotions involved in the plot. even the whole father-son dichotomy between allan quartermain and tom sawyer (yes, tom sawyer) isn't emotion filled or touching. it's just male bonding of the manly kind.
speaking of the tom sawyer character played by shane west from multiple teeny bopper movies including mandy ass moore's film debut. i heard they added him as a character because they wanted to have a draw for the pre-teen american bitches. the marketing people or whoever, producers, i don't know, they thought that adding tom sawyer would bring in the male crowd and then that shane west would bring in the female one. they're probably correct in this assumption, but i think it's sick and wrong to add something like that to a british based idea just to appease the americans and the creators' pocketbooks. heh.
this next part is written in black and needs to be highlighted because it completely gives away the ending and i am being polite by letting you choose to read it, (editor's note. i changed it a little so it doesn't give away as much since jacob said he could see it anyway and so now i feel bad. my point is still clear, but the whole truth has been deleted a little). at the end of the movie, tom sawyer and allan quartermain are having this little heart to heart in which quartermain says, "may the new century be yours, boy, as the old one was mine." the camera has kind of panned out or something and you can take note at this point that sawyer is standing straddling a crack in the floor. which is all very symbolic and well and good, and normally i might be pleased by it. but in the tripe which this movie produced in my spleen, i mostly just found it tacky and out of place.
favorite line:
random expendable soldier guy: "who ARE you?" to dorian gray.
dorian gray: "I'm complicated." sticks a sword in RESG.
x=ab^2 favorite character:
dorian gray. and that's not just because i love oscar wilde more than bram stoker or robert louis stevenson or mark twain or what have you. all right, it sort of is.
sean connery...i love him, i do. but i think he's a little too old to play this role. how depressing is that. power to you, connery. keep on trucking.
Posted by michele at 11:45 AM | Comments (8)
July 20, 2003
mennonite ass grabbing
today leaving the movie theatre in salem i watched some mennonite girls and their dates/husbands walk away to their car and one of the girls was fondling the guy's ass while they walked. his shoulder over hers, he weighed her down, while she committed acts of indecency on his covered flesh. is this right? what the hell do the mennonites believe and hold dear anyway? and why is there such a contingent of them in salem anyway? there were tons of them at the saturday market we went to yesterday too.
and speaking of the saturday market, i find it deadly amusing how people seem to find markets a convivial community sport in which they can give free rein to the impulse of approach. women just kept coming up to me and exclaiming over the hair, asking questions, even becoming hair-fondlers themselves. i react at the best of times with a nervous politeness which actually hides a seething resentment for all spooky strangers who dare to come near me. this was no different. on the plus side i got a pretty necklace and cool matching earcuffs.
last night at dinner my cousin james was relating a story of russian and cognac in which was featured the weighty sum of a thousand dollars per glass of cognac. i immediately flashed to an image of a virgin lashed to a spoke-rack which can spin to invert her--head down and feet up. her pubic hair is then set alight in order to mull the cognac in it's glass over the warmth of her broiled virgin nether lips. this could cost $1000. especially if they billed it as cherry cognac and you received the cherry rights as well.
sadly it turned out that cognac just sometimes costs 1K.
the wedding was gorgeous and fun and possibly i will write more about it when i finally return home. ah home.
beneath the golden balm
settling in the fields
evening steals in calm
and farmers count their yields.
the bee is in the lavender
the honey fills the comb
but here a rain falls never ending
and i am far from home.
"the exile's lament" kushiel's dart
Posted by michele at 10:16 PM | Comments (12)
whale rider
this movie about the maori in new zealand is fantastic. it recounts the myth of their origins and the role of one young girl in combatting centuries of ingrained patrilineal descent in order to carve a place for herself in the new world order. the girl who plays the main character of pai is AMAZING. truly, she is so good. she made me cry when she gave her speech dressed up in assembly with the moko painted on her face. as a whole it's kind of heartwrenchingly beautiful, a tale of one family, one town as they try to remain true to the old ways while adapting to the forced rigors of a world which is no longer really their own.
but what do i know? i had no clue as to this people's existence prior to this movie. but i think all the same that it is a wonderfully done film with poignancy and a lush, sweeping style. so go see for yourself and judge. =)
Posted by michele at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
l'auberge espagnole
as a movie extolling the virtues of a european clash of cultures skillfully intertwining, this movie as first-rate. if you go hoping to see more of audrey tautou's beautiful face you are in for disappointment as her role is slim. but it's fun to watch 8/9 pretty europeans of different nationalities sit around their apartment in spain and discuss life, love, sex, and philosophy of the disposessed and the legacy of country wrongs carried in the blood of it's children. very much a thinking movie with very little action or exciting camera work. simple, plain, unadorned other than with the fanciful nature of the cast and situation inspired.
Posted by michele at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2003
pirates of the caribbean
this movie rocked. seriously. so much fun. i mean, if you want something SERIOUS and THINKABLE than screw you. but the swordfight swashbuckling, the beautiful people, the crazy dialogue of johnny depp as CAPTAIN jack sparrow. all so good. explosions! boats! ships, i mean! beaches! treasure! i could go on! but i will stop!
favorite things about this movie:
the insouciant johnny depp playing a drunken, manic pirate to the very hilt of his ability. the man is a fucking genius.
the incredibly sexy-cute facial expressions of orlando bloom and his camaraderie with johnny depp and love of the pretty girl. plus he's just adorable.
keira knightley's gorgeously tanned skin, long legs, beautiful eyeballs, the package does it for me. i'm reminded with delight of the scene in 'bend it like beckham' when she's dancing with jonathan rhys-meyer in the club in germany in that tiny little pink top. holy sweet jesus. hot. but that's another movie. i will stop talking about it too.
favorite dialogue bits:
sparrow rips off elizabeth's corset
soldier man: "never would have thought of that."
JS: "clearly you've never been to singapore."
commodore: "you're the the worst pirate i've ever heard of"
JS: "ah but you have HEARD of me."
and then the whole sea turtle escape method when will is hearing about it for the first time.
"he roped the sea turtles together into a raft."
will: "he roped sea turtles. (pause) what did he use for rope?"
stumped silence till the camera pans out to show sparrow
JS: human hair. from my back." swishily walks off. oh the swish. so great.
anyway, i seriously enjoyed this movie and recommend it highly. to the point where i will say that upon release this movie will be mine immediately. that is how much i liked it. you can say that due to the number of movies i own, some of them quite crap, that's not much of a recommendation. but keep in mind most of those i buy for discounted prices to free, i don't often buy movies the day they're released. that requires forethought and planning that i don't usually possess because i'm lazy. but for pirates i will scrape together all my faculties.
Posted by michele at 09:37 PM | Comments (31)
July 10, 2003
washington wedding
here's what you're all really waiting for.
pictures. you know you love them.
i know i love them.
it's funny that i forgot to mention the tacoma glass museum since fully a third of my pictures seem to be of it. that place is (in my opinion) awesome. and we didn't even go inside. but the outside was super cool with lots of neat glass things to look at. i really liked it and am contemplating going back for the new japanese culture and anime exhibit that is starting july 12th. i'll be up there again after all. or close enough. hwee. holy crap. antonia levi whose book i used in my thesis is lecturing on sunday. shit, if only i could be up there THEN. maaaannnnnnnn.... sigh.
Posted by michele at 06:50 PM | Comments (10)
job offering
yesterday i went for an interview. i just got a phone call offering me the job. i don't even want a job! why did i say i was still interested? why? i could be jobless, free, and unfettered. no one else in my family has a job. my mom doesn't care. but what if i turn down this job and then i can't get another job for months? i have no skills. it's not like i'm good at anything in particular.
let me tell you a little about this job. it's working for a wholesale book distributor in the bay area (located in oakland by the airport and coliseum) doing customer service (phones) and data entry of orders. this is not glamorous. pay is minimal and it is far away from where i live. but there is a cat which lives there and lots of pretty books to look at and the potential for interesting co-workers. there's no dress code, my hair can be as crazy as i like, and did i mention the on-site cat? it doesn't seem like demanding or responsiblity driven work. but i am not sure if the computers are hooked up to the internet. which could pose a serious problem to my getting thru each day. wait...they have a webpage and email addresses...they must have internet. hmm well that is one concern eliminated. i could have health benefits again and money for all my expensive habits.
but working in oakland....for $9/hour....these are crazy intense drawbacks.
Posted by michele at 05:14 PM | Comments (6)
parolee takes hostage and is shot by police IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD
ahem. for those of you not as concerned about my personal safety as kristen, i submit this article for your perusal. in which you can read a stunning tale of a parolee on the lam, chased by cops to my neighborhood, breaking into houses, hitting the residents in the face (this actually learned by second hand sighted info), pointing a gun at them, stealing their car, trashing the neighbors across the streets fence, and then being shot by cops and taken to the hospital.
the fact that no info is given out about him--his condition, his name, his crime--is a little weird. the fact that my mom was home alone and could have been taken hostage is terrifying. but i will be blase and say that since nothing did happen to her there's no use worrying retrospectively. but inside i will be screaming, "mommy! mommy!"
there's still newsvans there. and cops were being all csi until 7 this morning. and there's blood on the street. things like this shouldn't happen in suburbia. which i know is a terribly stupid and naive thing to say. but come on, not MY suburbia.
Posted by michele at 12:19 PM | Comments (10)
wedding the first
i feel this is going to be inane. which is i suppose what i get when i'm this tired and still kind of reeling from the number of things i've done in the past week.
last wednesday i began driving with jacob and dianna up to doug and lisa's wedding in WA. we stopped at their house on the way up and saw what a gorgeous family residence they have. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, lovely leather furniture, huge backyard, multitudes of plants, and intense croquet games. that house was MADE to raise children in. even if right now they're using the extra bedrooms as "offices." and let me tell you, it is weird to see pictures of your ex-boyfriend and his fiancee all over his desk when it used to have framed photos of you on it.
but the strangeness of the weekend was only beginning. being in tacoma and at UPS again was freakish. i could not manage to explain to anyone however why it was so bizarre in a bad way. i tried describing how depressing it felt to be back somewhere which hasn't changed but in which you no longer belong AT ALL. but that didn't seem to fly really well. it was like looking around at a place where i used to walk and laugh and be and now i am a completely different me who no longer gets to walk to class along the paths like she owned them, or run into people sitting in front of the SUB with glad cries of welcome and bon homie, or even have homework to do. my mind doesn't even work the same way it used to. and being there again just made the differences which i am currently not so fond of more profound.
friday we picked up erica and jason at the airport and went back to campus. but we didn't stay nearly as long this time and then we got to go to happy dragon, the best restaurant ever. man i love them so much. the gimp was even there and faked remembering us out of a chided sense of compassion. it was beautiful.
and then friday night we drove up to seattle to see anderson and his new band chuckanuut drive play. for those of you who have not heard me and/or erica speak of anderson, our love for him is intense, full of rivalry, and lasting. it is absurd how great this boy is. seriously. so we're lurking around looking for him and we find him then and he is all with the washington hickish alt boy look. he's rebuilt a 1968 mustang. he's gotten arm muscles. he's better then ever before. erica and i are swooning. and then what does he do while we watch fireworks across the sound from gasworks park? he stands behind me and is all sweet and cuddly while inwardly i'm screaming, "yes! yes!" and erica is looking on with a jealous but concurrently delighted face. but then he has to go set up for the band and when we get back to the bar he comes and sits with us and launches into talking about his girlfriend who has the flu and is oh so wonderful and blah blah blah. it was so upsetting. but he showed us a picture and she is gorgeous and he is so adorably into her that you can't actually blame him. (fucking can too blame him. fucking cock-tease. fucking argh.)
chuckanut drive=great live. and the two main front guys (guitars and vocals) were awesome. and very nice too. even though erica kept telling them to take their clothes off. and then i got carried away and asked them to take their clothes off, slap each around a little with their cowboy belts, and make-out on stage. seriously though, they were hot. one of them is getting married this month too. crazy month of weddings.
saturday we got up late, rushed around like crazy, got dressed and went to the church. which we got to just in time. immediately running into doug's mom who was so giggly nervous and excited. she hugged me and was so happy to see us all there while we signed the guestbook and people stared at us. cause we were all so snazzy. and i have a lot of multi-colored hair.
the wedding was nice. it was very small and sweet and full of religiosity. whoo. lots of father son and holy spirits amen. and seeing people our age up there being stressed to about the foreverness of this and the holy sacrosanct of marriage and the binding laws etc was kind of intimidating. but, hey, more power to those who choose this and go thru with it and MEAN it, ey? admittedly it was also fun clutching erica's hand, death grip on jason's knee, unable to wipe the grin off my face, and carefully trying not to look at the snickering face of the best man which kept setting me off into snickers too. i shouldn't be allowed at weddings really. i have no sense of decorum.
the reception afterwards was full of chatting and schmoozing. i did no actual schmoozing. jacob looked slick enough to schmooze, but also seemed to avoid doing it. we basically had a little enclave and fought tooth and nail when drug out of it. take, for example, the bridal bouquet toss where we all attempted to pretend marriage. i grabbed jason, erica held onto brian for dear life, and dianna mutinously refused to let go of jacob. sadly the groom's mother saw us hiding and forced us out on the grass where i quickly drug erica to the back of the group of girls and refused to go any closer to the dreaded flowery death sentence. fucking wedding traditions. fucking stupid. amy, (doug's younger sister) caught it and we all breathed a healthy sigh of relief while we in turn mocked and goaded the boys out for the garter toss. jason refused to dive for it, for which i might never forgive him. the brother of the bride caught it on the second attempt. hi-larious.
sunday we hung out in seattle with brian (best man) eating at nasai and shopping. we then dumped jason at the airport and went to tacoma again to meet up with susan, karl, and brenden who we all went to school with. which was oh so great! it was so much fun seeing them all again. they're all younger by 1-2 years then us but are an awesome group of people who we associated with while at school. they told us about this movie they'd seen which i am now getting and once i have it i think we should all watch it. maybe it will be brilliant. it certainly sounded brilliant from their descriptions.
monday and tuesday were spent driving home with a brief interlude at powell's in portland where i bought way too many books. man i love books. i've got almost a complete set of margaret mahy books now and a first american edition of rushdie's jaguar smile
pictures should be up sometime soon. i've got two rolls. it's amazing as usual how few pictures of me there are. and no real good ones of the lovely dress my mom made for me. although i got several compliments on it, (though not nearly as many as i got on the hair over the course of the weekend. shit, i fucking love this hair.)
and that concludes this hell of long post. if you actually read it all i thank and congratulate you. if you did not suffer thru all my descriptions...well...whatever. you can look at pictures later.
Posted by michele at 12:26 AM | Comments (7)
July 08, 2003
the sugar shoes corporation
holy canoodle. so a while ago (2 weeks or so) gene called me and made me all nervous by telling me he had to read me something. i was a little panicky because it turned out to be from an employee of the sugar shoes company and i was sure i was going to be sued. but happiness ensued rather because in fact they were trying to contact me to give me FREE THINGS because i have been advertising and drawing business for them. i was ecstatic, you can imagine. free sugar products? hell yeah, bring it on. i was expecting one of their free necklaces. maybe a little makeup sample or something. but then they asked for my shoe size. FREE SUGAR SHOES IN THE OFFING. i almost expired from joy. i mean, who manages to get free products because of their webpage? this is definitely a first for me. a first i intend to replicate somehow. you wouldn't think it would get much better than free shoes though, right? but that's where you'd be wrong.
i got home today from my adventures in the pacific northwest, (more to follow), to find a big ass sugar shoes box waiting for me in my room. i excitedly ripped it open to find:
free magnet (1)
free stickers (about 6)
free makeup (3 kinds)
free sugar purse/bag (1)
AND FREE LIGHT UP SUGAR SHOES.
THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER. THE BEST PRESENT FILLED DAY OF FREE SUGAR.
sugar is sweet and so are you. but not as sweet as my twinkle toed shoes.
Posted by michele at 03:36 PM | Comments (144)