Wednesday, June 30, 2004 Dude, this is totally about my hair
This weekend my friend visited from out of town, and she and my roommate (the one who was not away on business) and I spent most of our time together. Sometime when we were out doing errands and so on, one of us noticed that we were a walking set-up. A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead walk into: the woods, K-Mart, the apartment, the park. We didn't go out much, and avoided the bit where we walk into a bar altogether. The redhead doesn't drink, the blonde is frugal, and the brunette tends to stay indoors and type.
We did not meet any religious people, because we did not buy the bean pies. We couldn't think of any punchlines, either. I just did just now, though. "--And so the 'topsoil'! (we got to fill the new flowerbed) Was actually!! MANURE!!!" It's a prank we're playing on Ultra Mega Templeton, the rat who lives beneath the backyard. (Shh! He is legend.)
The brunette is not used to identifying in that way. She--OK, it's me, and I'm telling you only because I have strong negative feelings about people who refer to themselves in third person--I used to change my haircolor fairly often. The only reason I've let up a little in the past 6 or 8 months is that once you dye your hair too dark, you're stuck with it. I knew this when I did it. I've known since I first dyed my hair and by extension, all the bathroom towels an unnatural Midnight Black when I was about 14, and it wouldn't come out no matter what kinds of harsh chemicals I put on it. It wouldn't fade, either.
When one person in a circle of teenage oddballs learns the black dye lesson, it should follow that the rest do, too, and I think this is the case, even though I was not the first in my city, my school, nor my group of friends to be lured in. I think it was something we did to trick ourselves into a permanent change, in the days when we were not legally allowed to approach professionals for tattoos or marriage licenses.
Still, we all had to act surprised. "But this is a completely different brand! It says 8-24 shampoos. It's been 19. Now what am I supposed to do?" And all our friends had to commiserate.
Of course, we weren't stupid, even those of us who were totally stupid. We knew that no matter how permanent something is, when there's no chance to eradicate your mistake with powerful chemicals or cover it with something more attractive, there's always the scissors.
Then everybody calls you "little fella."
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/30/2004 01:30:00 AM
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Monday, June 28, 2004 Outsider art
This story has a moral. I made it a few years ago. It has been retouched for legibility. My sister says it is terrifying and serial killerish. She is wrong. It is inspiring and beautiful.
posted by Frenzy Lohan |
6/28/2004 05:17:00 PM
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Please, please, let it be an artifical flavor
I'd nearly forgotten: this morning at the farmer's market under the expressway, there was a snow ball concession stand. As those of you from more reasonable place might not know, the snow ball is BaltiMore's favorite summer treat. It is barely-crushed ice, doused in syrup. In other cities, they've learned to make ice cream, or at least (the stupidly named, yet delicious) water ice.
I would've walked by, but my roommate stopped me and pointed out that one of the available snow ball flavors, along with "red" and "blue raspberry" was a bottle of viscous green syrup labelled "Pimp Juice."
You deserved to know. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/28/2004 03:48:00 AM
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Can I ask you a personal question?
It's Produce Central here at the home office. We went to the market this morning, and picked up some other food tonight when we went to DC to drop off E.W..
Here is my question: What do you do with kumquats?
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/28/2004 02:15:00 AM
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Saturday, June 26, 2004 Auntie Social
Who ditched the barbecue? I ditched the barbecue. I sent E.W. down instead. She reported that there was no corn on the cob at all. I wasn't going to leave the apartment for some lousy chips and salad. I guess they had hamburgers and stuff too, but what would I do with that?
I guess I might've gotten a kick out of meeting the neighbors, but only if, later on, I could erase their minds somehow, so that we would never feel obligated to make small talk if we passed on the sidewalk.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/26/2004 11:39:00 PM
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Friday, June 25, 2004 (incredibly local) News Round Up
*E.W. hates Baltimore, and does not wish to see the sights. This is fortunate, as I have not yet ascertained what those might be. However, her visit has been great fun.
*Last night we cooked out in the backyard, and the neighbors across the alley kept coming over to peer out their windows at us. They are jealous of our freedom.
*A strange cat climbed right up the fire escape and in through the window and scared Trouble, the cat of the house. Trouble frightened it in return when she made it aware of just how puffy her tail had the potential to be.
*Two out of three geraniums surveyed are not dead. The third is a total bummer to look at, and I wonder how much of a hand I had in endings its brief and unhappy life.
*Tomorrow is the block meeting and barbecue about the state of the gazebo. They are going to love my proposal to add slot machines instead of painting. They're going to love it, too when I eat all the corn on the cob, if there is any.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/25/2004 01:44:00 PM
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Thursday, June 24, 2004 Lazy bones
This morning my friend E.W. from out of town was sleeping on the floor of the living room, and the cat was sleeping too, about three feet away, stretched out on her back, but with her little paw over one eye. Then, E.W. rolled over, and so did the cat!
My friend is allergic to cats, as is seemingly everyone who stays here. We're the worst bed and breakfast in town.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/24/2004 12:01:00 PM
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Wednesday, June 23, 2004 a pencil or a typwriter, or what
I was just looking at this poem I've been working on for a while, and I was at a dead end, so I did what idiots do, and I tried it in different fonts. I thought of the people who would bring things into creative writing classes that they'd put into novelty fonts, or where they'd centered all the lines. They are the ones who made me think that this was, indeed, what idiots do, because some of these former classmates had clearly put more time into presentation than they had into whatever it was they were presenting.
I think about it now, though, and I feel a little ashamed for reacting so negatively. In On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner wrote that the question he was asked most often at author Q&As was "Do you write with a pencil, a typewriter, or what?" He talks about it in a chapter near the end of the book, called "Faith." The way he saw it, the question wasn't an assinine waste of his time. Instead, it signified the uncertainty and suspicion that new writers feel, and that people weren't asking about pencils at all. They were asking if maybe there wasn't some series of voodoo tricks that one had to employ to make it.
I wish I'd been kinder, in general, in my writing classes. I was never vicious for the sake of being vicious, but there were days I harbored less love in my heart than I could have, and when I was really impatient with people for wasting class time that I saw as my own. That pulsating sense of entitlement was one of the things that ended up getting me through school, I think, but now that I'm a thousand years old and totally mellow, I think that I should have probably just relaxed.
I was so serious, though, and I was so scared. I hated the idea that somebody who thought it made sense to put an entire short story in the comic sans font might, in any situation, know a single thing more than I did about putting a story together.
I can't imagine writing before the rise of the word processor, let alone the ballpoint pen, but then, too, I appreciate how it helps, sometimes to make things more difficult for oneself. There have been times when I've had to use a pen and paper, even though my own handwriting is painfully bad and slow. If write fast enough for storytelling on paper to be practical, my handwriting is barely legible, and in that way I can move on even if I've written something down in a stupid, clumsy way, because it takes a second to decode the penmanship.
The problems with the poem stayed just as bad as ever, no matter what font. Maybe next I'll try centering it on the page, or adding ridiculous clip art. My new benevolent outlook allows me to realize that this is all truly productive and part of the creative process, and that I am not just being an a-hole.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/23/2004 03:08:00 AM
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Monday, June 21, 2004 The livin' is easy
The dogs that always have heart attacks when anybody goes out to water the plants are heart-attacking away right now. Maybe the giant rat who guest-starred at our last outdoor dinner is active this evening, or maybe there's something in the air tonight. There's a bitter fight about historical preservation vs. modifying buildings so that they're more functional on the neighborhood bulletin board. I just don't know. I'm afraid that at the next neighborhood association meeting, someone's going to "come heavy."
I've been working on a project that involves what my sister calls "irresponsible creative writing." She and I agree that it's way more rewarding than the responsible kind.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/21/2004 09:58:00 PM
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city mice
My roomates' band played in a bar with a doghouse theme in West Virginia this weekend. I came along, despite years of indoctrinated anti-West Virginia prejudices. In Regular Virginia, it is customary to make cruel jokes about our neighbors to the West. I will not repeat them here. Also, every year when they put Miss America on TV, you can always pick out Miss West Virginia without reading the sashes. It's like they picked out an official state face and stuck with it.
Everyone we met was incredibly kind, especially the nice kids who took us to a pirate-themed donut restaurant at 3 AM, and put up with our city mice act with good humor. "Wait, so, that really is a chain of sit-down biscuit restaurants?" we'd say. And they'd recommend entrees, because they all had a personal favorite at the biscuit restaurant.
They let us follow them to their home and sleep on their floor. Their house was on a mountainside, up some steep steps. Climbing down in the daylight, I realized that if I'd been able to see them when we stumbled in all sleep-deprived the night before, I would have probably thought too hard and injured myself: the stairs were made out of stacked cinderblocks that went up a hill at what seemed to be maybe an 80 degree angle. The ghost of John Denver must have carried us up there safely. He probably liked our moving and near-constant acapella rendition of "Country Roads". posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/21/2004 02:38:00 AM
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Friday, June 18, 2004 What they were paying them for
Yesterday I titled my post with a rhetorical question, but I've slept on it, and I realize now that it's patently miraculous that my guidance counselors didn't steer me right into pony cart school, street performance, or chat room trolling.
Here is a brief overview of what, whether this was their intention or not, the heads of my schools were paying the guidance counselors to do.
1. Counselor D. This was an arty magnet school, so everyone went by his or her first name. I cannot recall that D. had an office. Instead, he could be found strolling through the halls of the school, or to the smoking area in the back parking lot, buttonholing students at random. "Do you know what happened to the widemouthed frog?" he'd say. Or "meringue is on my finger." He'd say these things because he was Southern, and effin' crazy.
When a student was college-bound or had been expelled and had to seek a new school, it was D's job to convert the written evaluations we received into a letter-grade transcript. Students he liked received straight "A"s, regardless of how their evaluations read. When I left that school, D. was mad at me for going. Still, I received a decent, if implausible transcript of straight "B"s.
2. Mr. T. taught English and several electives as well as assisting students with their course schedules, helping them pick colleges, and brooding silently. He generally wore a Satanic half-smile. Sometimes, he would openly insult students, and they never noticed. Mr. T. called all students, even the fluffiest of the fluffy girls, by their last names. Mr. T seemed to like it when students showed gumption, so I made a point of heckling him a little. Once my friend K. went too far, and she swears he lifted her by her backpack and threw her into the hall. For years I felt like I'd struck a perfect balance between mouthing off and being a reasonable student, because Mr. T. never threw me into the hall! But now I recall that it was he who directed me towards my pretentious ol' cow college, and I wonder who had the last laugh. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/18/2004 08:31:00 AM
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Thursday, June 17, 2004 What the hell did they pay those guidance counselors for?
Today I bought some strawberries from a man with a pony cart. If I'd known at the age of 17 that one could combine on-the-job drinking and pretty, pretty ponies, I'm not all sure I would've bothered with college. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/17/2004 04:16:00 PM
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004 Operators are standing by
Since I was about seven and started spending a lot of my time watching TV shows aimed at retirees, such as The Price is Right and syndicated episodes of Green Acres, I've wanted a Garden Weasel.
Now that I have access to a so-called garden rife with sharp objects, I feel like it is especially necessary. One of my kill-joy housemates has pointed out that hoe might work just as well, since our soil goes six inches down at its deepest. Under that, one it's all old concrete, and under that, one might imagine, is more dirt.
We're talking about taking up the concrete, but I'm afraid we'll find human skeletons down there.
I like where I'm living. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/15/2004 12:42:00 PM
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Sunday, June 13, 2004 Second impressions
Some people are unjustly biased. My one friend who is studying film in Middle Earth typed, "You saw Riddick? I don't know you anymore."
People close off their hearts and minds, and I'm not ashamed to say it. We need to feel more faith in The Franchise. Sam's Club is offering The Passion of the Christ in bulk. I propose we devoted ourselves to a more wholesome film, with a clear message: Vin Diesel can see heat, and is unstoppable.
After my second viewing of Riddick (matinee, at non-Egyptian-themed theater), I am no less charitably inclined towards the film. Everyone in the theater agreed, and offered commentary such as "Damn! Damn. Damn!!!" when Vin Diesel did amazing things.
I may be going out of town tomorrow, on non Riddick-related bidness. I dont know. That just seems weird. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/13/2004 08:37:00 PM
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Ok, you know what?
Eat it Ebert; eat it Roeper. Y'all people wouldn't know fun if you saw it in a megaplex with an egyptian bordello theme, and got there 45 minutes early and yet still had to stand in line. You wouldn't know fun if beforehand they sent out a comedian and an illusionist, and then an altercation with a heckler became so heated that there was nearly a fight in the theater, and then there wasn't time for a single illusion. You wouldn't even be to the opening credits of fun.
You wouldn't know fun if fun chose to break itself down to manageable two-hour chunks of cinema, rather than four hour epics that were still part of a series that didn't stand alone if you didn't already know the backstory.
You wouldn't know fun if fun was goofily self-referential--and sweaty. You wouldn't know fun if there was no kissing. You wouldn't know fun if in the final scene, the protagonist gets into another goofy scrape, and makes a face to match. Y'all people got problems. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/13/2004 02:26:00 AM
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Saturday, June 12, 2004 I feel like it's personal
The text below is from Ebert and Roeper's column in the Chicago Sun-Times
When Richard Roeper reviewed the current two-disc DVD of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" on TV, I noted that a four-disc set of the movie was coming out later this year. He observed that the complete trilogy will come out on "an accordion size set that will take up the next six years of your life." I observed that "LOTR" fans should "get a life." I meant this as an affectionate ironic throwaway, but have received dozens of wounded e-mails from Ring devotees who believe "LOTR" has, indeed, given them a life, and after seeing "The Chronicles of Riddick," I agree. They have a life. The prospect of become an expert on "Riddick," in contrast, is too depressing to contemplate.
We're going tonight. I can't wait. His eyes, man. They see DARKNESS---Riiiiidick!!!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/12/2004 02:51:00 PM
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Friday, June 11, 2004 You know
It just occurred to me: My mother never told me to pick the very best one.
And that explains so much. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/11/2004 01:25:00 AM
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004 BaltiMore
This afternoon I rode my bike out to Charles Village and got my hair did. On the way, I was pretty pleased with myself, because here I was, a bike person. It didn't matter that I'd been too lazy to mount my new U-Lock onto the frame, because I could keep it in my enormous purse, and it didn't matter that my purse kept sliding around and getting in the way of my knees. Other things that didn't matter: it was like, a hundred degrees today, and I am from a delicate, grub-like people who should not head outdoors in the hot sun. It didn't matter that I'd kept meaning to take the big toe-clips off the pedals, but hadn't, and that they kept dragging on the pavement.
On the way home, I was less pleased. Somehow, the chain had slipped and tangled and jammed. I yanked at it for a while, and then started walking home, dragging my idiot bike beside me. About ten blocks later, a middle-aged man with a slightly bandaged leg wound stopped as he passed me in the opposite direction. He laughed at me, then flipped the bike right over and put the chain back where it was supposed to be. I thanked him, and he laughed at me some more.
As I hopped back on the bike, another young man who, it seemed, had been walking the same way I had said, "You mean you just had the chain wrong? For all this time?"
"Yes, that's about right," I said. He laughed, too.
This is what they mean when they call it Charm City!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/09/2004 11:45:00 PM
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Tuesday, June 08, 2004 News in Brief
*Earlier today, a big cicada flew in the window, and the cat ate it all, with evident enjoyment. There weren't even any little legs or wings left over.
*This afternoon, the ice cream truck came through, and we decided it was our duty to chase it. J&J and I cornered said truck in an apartment complex parking lot. I had my first Snowball, which is crushed ice drowning in syrup. It's what they do for summer treats around here, the psychopaths. In today's housemeeting the issue was floated that we should start a water ice concession as a public service.
*While I was waiting in line for my ice-in-goo, a middle-aged man in business attire came trotting up. He smiled at me and said, "It reminds me of being a kid." Then he punched me right in the arm. Sock!
*Yesterday I walked down to the harbor, and I went to the silo-sized Barnes and Noble next to the ESPN Zone place. While there, I purchased a Writer's Market book, Poets and Writers magazine, On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner, and the June issue of Popular Mechanics. The clerk waded through the writing-related stuff with this "You are a total douchebag" look on his face, until he got to the Popular Mechanics and did a rather theatrical double-take.
Later, I realized what I should have said to him: "That's right. I'm building a novel-machine--dick."
Further bulletins as events warrant.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/08/2004 11:02:00 PM
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Monday, June 07, 2004 That's a fon-don't
Maybe I'd better go ahead and warn you, after the sensitive nature of the cow/horse debates, that my own parents have eaten horse meat. They were in Europe at the time. It was the 1970s. They fondued.
Later, they got caught up in more 70s bizarro-culture. Homesteading, horrible crafts. Now I'm grateful that they didn't attend key parties, or if they did, they have not yet decided that I am old enough to know. (As I typed that, though, a short film played in my mind: somewhere with wood panelling and shag carpeting, to a soundtrack of popular music they wouldn't like and the clinking of ice in cocktail glasses: a mustachioed gentleman trying to subtly explain to my parents the evening's true purpose. My parents never, ever catching on.)
When I was little, though, I had little basis of lifestyle comparison. I didn't go to school, we didn't have TV. My sister has always been quicker than I am, and she seemed to know from toddlerhood that we were living, by many standards, like savages. Improper interior design bothered her as much at age 8 as it does now, at age 45.
I played on the indoor outdoor carpeting and sat on the juice can stools, and I never blinked, but the first time I ever suspected my parents of moral fallibility was when I found out that they were capable of swallowing horse flesh.
It was a special occaision, possibly Christmas, and we were all gathered around the spitting double-boiler filled with hot oil. I had the forks with the blue plastic gems iembedded in the wooden handles. I speared pieces of raw beef and dunked them in the pot 'til they changed from pink to brown, and my parents spent a few minutes praising the dining culture of "the continent" over that of rural Virginia.
I forget how it came up: something about how some achingly provinical relative had been shocked to learn what they were eating. "Fondue?" I asked.
"Well," they giggled a little, "sort of."
They explained that everybody in Europe went around eating horses all the time, and it was OK. I don't remember if I got upset at the time or not, but years later I'd still catch myself looking at them and wondering how they'd let themselves get away with it.
Which is to say: it's one of my roommate's birthday today, and we're all going to the Melting Pot! In Towson! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/07/2004 05:21:00 PM
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Sunday, June 06, 2004 Mtv? I don't do designer drugs
There are days when I do miss cable. The television here at the Home Office is a little "funny". Either I'm drunk all the time, or the picture is awful.
We generally watch DVDs on the computer instead. Recently, we had to rent Pitch Black, because Vin Diesel is like a muppet made of beef. Also, we'd been yelling "Riiiiddick!" around the house ever since they started advertising whatever movie where they all have to yell, "Riiiidick!" in the previews.
"Riiiiiiidick!" The cat hates it. Try it in your own home.
Apparently Mr. Diesel signed some kind of 14-picture Riiiiiidick-related deal. His handlers should be smacked.
The first Pitch Black DVD we rented was horribly scratched. When I went in to exchange it for a working one, the clerk tried to convince me to purchase the unrated director's cut instead. "No, no," I said. "See, I don't actually need to own this. I just kind of need to see it. Right now."
Here is the plot of Pitch Black: a spaceship carrying passengers and a dangerous convict crashes on a desert planet inhabited by flesh-eating bugs that only strike in the absence of light. As a solar elcipse darkens the skies, the passengers aren't sure if they're more afraid of the bugs...or of Riddick!
You love it.
Recently soooomebody was telling me about how he strongly disliked 80s pop music when it was new, but now kind of enjoys it because it evokes a feeling of nostalgia for that time period.
Well, pretend I'm more erudite than I am, and pretend I hated this Riddick crap when it came out, like a rational person. But pretend, now, that it's the future, and pretend I am famous, and I am on Space-Vh1, on "I love the 00s!"
RIIIIIIIIIDICK!!!!!!!!
See? Now it's cultural commentary.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/06/2004 07:39:00 PM
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Saturday, June 05, 2004 You can't feed that to a horse!
My high school boyfriend's father had strong feelings on horse people vs. cow people. Cow people were superior, because cows were hardier and less prone to sudden and unexpected death. He cautioned his children not to associate with horse people, because they were snooty.
Here I am, though, surveying the emotional upset in the living room: Smarty Jones (or, you know, his stinkin' jockey) has just lost the Balmont, and the household is working through its feelings in whatever manner seems appropriate. Several of us have tried swearing.
Perhaps the hardest hit of all is Trouble, the kitty-cat. She hates most things. When everyone was yelling at the television, she yelled at all of us, and is still stalking around with her tail all puffy and murder in her withered little heart.
I, for one, knew that poor SmoJo was doomed when they aired footage of him practically surround by nuns! At the racetrack! It's like they were trying to jinx him.
Cow people, at least, do not have to deal with this sort of emotional rollercoaster. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/05/2004 07:03:00 PM
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Friday, June 04, 2004 After the taste is the aftertaste
I should've left the freakin' cherries on the freakin' trees. The jam I made yesterday was the most labor-intensive bad food I've ever produced. Imagine jam. Imagine it tasting like cough syrup.
How?
Probably POISON!
I'm going to have to find that more delicious tree the man on the street was telling me about. Or, you know, a job. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/04/2004 04:37:00 PM
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Wednesday, June 02, 2004 so I gathered*
Today I staged a daring daylight raid on some cherry trees growing near the art school. I thought up all kinds of things to say if anybody came and told me to stop, but nobody did. Instead, people walking by asked discreet questions to see whether or not I was insane. "So, can you...eat those? Are you sure?"
When I was almost done, a man came by and told me that there was a more delicious variety of cherry growing at a park around the corner, but I was kind of sick of picking fruit by that time. I walked home instead. My hands looked like I'd been eating cats raw. The kids in the middle school playground were audibly moved by the spectacle.
*sorry posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/02/2004 11:38:00 PM
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I hope you like whirring noises
Just as it's obligatory to post about parking in blogs from places like Boston, I've decided that in Baltimore, you have have to write about cicadas. The other day they were deafening, and some of them tried to attack David!
On the block where I'm living, the nightly police helicopters tend to drown out that kind of thing. Thank goodness for those helicopter patrols. I'm sure it cuts down on rooftop crime. If only there were some sort of small helicopter that could be made to run over the land, so that each week's rash of car break-ins could be monitored or prevented. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/02/2004 03:19:00 PM
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