Best TV Show I Watched: Pushing Daisies. This has been my favorite new show of the season. It’s so visually appealing. It’s like you’re watching a Tim Burton movie but not as dark. Do yourself a favor and catch up on back episodes online. You’ll thank me. I also enjoyed: Weeds, The Office, 30 Rock. Storm Chasers is really good too.
Best Movie I Saw: Wordplay was interesting. It did make me go out and buy a NY Times Crossword puzzle book. Some of those things are ridiculously hard.
Best Thing I Read: Honestly, nothing. It’s been a slow reading week.
Best Music I Heard: I got on a Matt the Electrician and Southpaw Jones kick this week.Their live album is great. I haven’t seen them live in awhile. I should do that soon.
I just woke up a few minutes ago with this weird thought. for some reason I was thinking this was the anniversary of the OJ Simpson murders. I don’t know why. The murders happened June 12, 1994 and the trial was over October 3, 1995. Now I can’t go back to sleep for some reason.
p.s. i’m posting this from my new phone. It’s the Sprint Mogul. It’s pretty fucking awesome. I’m still trying to figue out the quirks. Super cool though.
Ok, I’m going to attempt to go back to sleep. Wish me luck.
Best Thing I Saw on TV: Kid Nation. Taylor finally got her come-uppance. Deal with it, indeed. I also enjoyed: Chuck and that baseball episode of MythBusters.
Best Movie I Saw: This is ridiculous but North Shore. I loved that movie so much when I was a kid. I wanted to be a surfer. That whole not being able to swim and not living near the ocean got in the way of that.
Best Book I Read: I started reading Dashiell Hammett’s novels. I’m starting with The Maltese Falcon. I love the hard boiled detective stuff. That dame had gams that walked right off the page.
Best Music I Heard: I’ve been listening to a lot of The Lucksmiths (the title is from their song Adolescent Song of Mindless Devotion). I love their witty lyrics and the jangly guitars. I also enjoyed: Last week (which I forgot to do a post for) was Radiohead’s new album. It’s a good one.
You know those little moments in life that make it worthwhile? The ones where you go outside for a morning smoke after working all night, the sun is just breaking the horizon. It’s chilly for the first time. Someone is burning leaves.
How about one of those nights that you realize you can’t live without the person you’re with? When you’re watching your favorite TV show and she’s out of town and for some reason it’s just not as funny. When you’re antsy and you don’t have a clue as to why. Then you realize you don’t know what to do with yourself.
Yeah.
Kristin, Jana, Abbe, and I went to the State Fair in Dallas this weekend. Of the four of us, I think only Abbe had ever been before. It was such a beautiful day. It had been so hot lately that I was worried that it was going to be oppressive but it never really got above the lower 80s. A perfect day weather-wise.
There was so many things to see and so many things to eat at the fair. I think one thing I learned was that you can fry practically anything. There were fried marshmellows, fried latte, fried cookie dough, fried Coke…anything you can imagine. The group decided that fried Coke and fried cookie dough had to be tasted. The cookie dough was ok. It seemed more like just a crust around a ball of cookie dough. Not very impressive. Then came the Coke. I don’t know what I was expecting. Did I think that they had somehow found a way to keep a liquid in a ball and fry it? Was it like that fruit bursty gum that would squirt out burning hot liquid magma and burn your throat? Turns out it was basically just some fried dough that did not taste anything like Coca Cola. They throw this in a cup, pour some Coke syrup over the top and add some whipped cream and voila! Fried Coke. Not impressive at all.
Then, of course, there are the corn dogs. The State Fair is famous for it’s "corny dogs". Jana had never had one. Apparently she was raised by aliens and landed on our planet a short time ago. So anyway, we all had a corn dog and went to watch something I never thought was real: dog dancing.
I had seen dog dancing on a King of the Hill episode a few years ago and thought it was just something the writers had made up. How wrong I was. Most of it was pretty boring. Near the end there was this crazy dog that could walk on his front paws and got swung around while holding on to a hat with his teeth. It was pretty insane. Kristin took a video of it but I haven’t uploaded it yet.
I did bring home an unwanted souvenir. I woke up on Sunday morning and my eye hurt a little. Then on Monday I woke up and my eye was crusted shut and swollen like someone had punched me. It was so painful. I guess it’s a sty. There is a whole shit ton of home remedies for sties. Some of my favorites are:
- Place a handful of fresh parsley in a soup bowl. Pour a cup of boiling
water over the parsley and let it steep for 10 minutes. Soak a clean
washcloth in the hot parsley water, lie down, put the cloth on your
closed lids and relax for 15 minutes. Repeat the procedure before
bedtime. Parsley water is also good for eliminating puffiness around
the eyes.
- Wet a tea bag. Place over your eye for 10 to 15 min. The tea will draw the sty. You can use any type of tea bag.
- Rub the eye sty
three times with a gold wedding ring.
- Prepare a strong cup of burdock-seed tea every morning and take 1 tablespoon before each meal and 1 tablespoon at bedtime.
Being tuesday it was trivia night. I stayed in bed until the last possible second and just grabbed the first shirt within reach.
So trivia happened. We didn’t win (again). It ran a little later than usual and I had maybe 10 minutes at home before i had to leave for work.
I stopped at the gas station to get some provisions for the long night ahead. As I was leaving I caught my reflection in the glass. I was wearing the same shirt that I had worn to work the previous night.
Knowing everyone at work, I knew they would say something about this. So I stopped at the store and bought this shirt.
I can still fold those footballs.
" It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins
in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the
summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill
rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on
it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine
and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when
you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken
branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer
was gone."
-A. Bartlett Giamatti
…or going to the Moose Lodge.
So me, Kristin, and Jana went to a sort of pre-wedding party
for some friends of ours (they are getting married in Mexico so
everyone wanted to do something here). We didn’t know everyone there so
we were eating and laughing having a good time. Hhis guy came up and
asked if he could sit at our table. he was a good looking guy so Jana
immediately took interest.
I don’t remember how it came up but we somehow found out he was a
member of the Moose Lodge. I don’t know anything about the Moose but
apparently it’s a fraternal social organization similar to the Elks but
not secret like the Freemasons. We were all asking questions and he was
like "oh come out to the lodge one night. Beer is cheap and we just
hang out there". Me and my friend Anton made jokes the rest of the
night about "wait until i tell the guys at the lodge" and "I wonder
what the ‘Big Moose’ would have to say about that?"
The night continued on and the drinks were flowing. We had weird
conversations like "who is your favorite serial killer?" (which drove
one person off) and "what’s the difference between plushies and furries
and if you were going to be one what would you be?" Our host and
hostess were ready to wind up the party so someone made the suggestion
to hit the Moose Lodge for an after-party of sorts.
We headed over to the lodge (along with Staci, Snowden, and Anton) and got the grand tour. (Quick aside: the Moose have a swimming pool but it is filled in with dirt.) Then Kristin started
asking a bunch of questions about joining the lodge and their views on
things (political, what they actually do, etc.). Meanwhile I played
pool and listened to classic country on the jukebox. I vaguely remember
signing up to be a Moose and agreeing to come back on Thursday? I don’t
know.
So I may or may not be a Moose. And Kristin may or may not be a Woman of the Moose. It’s very confusing!
I’m a bit behind on my weekly favorites. Better late than never right? Right.
Best TV show I watched: The Office was good this week. Jim and Pam were "outed" as dating. 30 Rock was also great. I had missed Tracey and Kenneth! I also enjoyed: Kid Nation, especially when they were "drinking" and doing "car bombs." Makes you wonder where these kids learned that from. Top Chef was good even if the person I wanted to win didn’t.
Best Movie I saw: Funny enough, I didn’t watch any movies this week. I am really in the mood for Rushmore right now though.
Best Book I read: The Game by Neil Strauss was way better than I expected it to be. While somewhat misogynistic, it really explored the dynamics of social relationships. Neil Strauss is a great writer.
Best Music I heard: Okkervil River’s The Stage Names is great. I especially liked "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe" and "Unless it Kicks." It’s really good stuff. I also enjoyed: Taken By Trees’ Open Field. You may recognize the singer as the girl who sings with Peter, Bjorn and John in "Young Folks." I really like her voice.
It’s that time of year again, my favorite time of year. The fall. The baseball playoffs are in full swing. The nights are getting longer and cooler. The summer days are waning. While it is my favorite season, it is also the start of my perpetual runny nose. I feel like Mother Nature has smacked me in the face with a pollen bat. I sound like I’ve spent all day doing coke in a seedy bathroom. Tissues with lotion are a godsend. I pop Claritan like it is candy. The perils of living in Austin I suppose.
I’ve decided to get a flu shot this year. The past three or four years I’ve gone without and every year I’ve gotten the flu. Technically I’ve already had it this year (in March), but it always seems to creep up on me around Christmas. I don’t want to spend Christmas in New York huddled under blankets dreaming fever dreams. That is not the visions of sugar plums dancing that I want.
