If I had a spoofy kind of death metal band I would name it Chili Con Carnage. That’s what I was thinking earlier tonight and then it occurred to me that perhaps that’s already taken and lo and behold it is. I mean, of course it is. In that case, I’d have to go with Burrito Tag, and I’m not even looking that one up to see if it’s taken because it might be too crushing.
But if I were to birth a surrealist movement that also made Mexican food I’d obviously go with Enchiladada.
I bet you were. Well the awesome people at The Activity Pit made a fan group for me! This is officially my first online fan group! Sure, there’s been quite a bit of online chatter about me and yes, I am inundated with emails and comments and okay, perhaps it’s hard for me to go outside because I am mobbed by people who just want a piece of me because they think they know me even if they don’t—it’s just that I have that kind of effect on them—but this is the first online fan group and I don’t know what to say except I swear that I had no hand in this. Truly! So for all you people that think I suck it, now YOU can suck it because I have an online fan group and I’m fairly sure that you don’t, la la la!
Wait, was that obnoxious? Also, I’d like to thank Jesus Christ and my mom and my agent and my agent’s mom and Chad Lowe.
In a word, this experience has been “humbling.” Also, it’s making me cocky.
It needed salt.
I’m not saying this in a pithy way, though I’m quite certain I can’t help but be pithy—it’s a curse!—but I mean it genuinely. The soup is not a symbol. It’s actual soup. And the salt is not a metaphor. It’s actual salt. Or lack of.
Also, man did I have a day. I had a 4/5’s kind of day which is where 4/5’s of the conversations you have are good and 1/5 make you want to shove a pencil in your eye. But I mean 1/5 of each conversation. Not 1/5 of the people I talked to. Except now that I think about it, I had some perfectly fine conversations. But a couple doozies. I could tell you, but I think these people read my blog. So in that case, yes, I’m talking about you. Unless I’m not.
I’m probably not. God, what the hell am I saying?
I don’t know but I’d rather be looking at puggles.
talking about how I look like crap when I travel. Now I know what you’re thinking: “You? Looking like crap? Impossible! You are a vision in sweatpants and fleece!”
Really, public, you are too kind. What have I done to deserve you? I haven’t even told you about the Bike Incident In Fourth Grade yet. Nor about how ducklings smell. (They have a certain musky duckling odor which is a blend of the food you feed them and their tiny duckling poohs. If ever you had pet ducks, it’s a heady fragrance. I kind of miss it.)
Oh, did I not tell you? The bottom dropped out of the nostalgia problem last night—I awoke from a dream about a high school boyfriend—and now apparently I’m trapped in nostalgia free fall and so memories from all parts of my life are kicking themselves up, be they when I peed all over my bike on the way home, accidentally and inexplicably in fourth grade, or when I had pet ducks even earlier than that.
And if you happen to be someone who is reading my blog for the first time, welcome! It isn’t all bike urine and duckling crap all the time, but it isn’t not that, either.
I would approach pensive people and say, “Puggle for your thoughts?”
Thanks to Adam from Apple for the following shots. In this first one, we see David Schwimmer at the Q&A at the Apple Store that I moderated last night. We were talking about the movie he directed, Run, Fatboy, Run:
And here’s David Schwimmer talking and me looking like I’m sitting in a wheelchair. I’m not, mind you, but don’t I look like I am?
This next one captures David Schwimmer and me, sharing an intimate moment and really connecting as only interviewer and subject can.
And in this next one, we are tiny. (not to scale)
Here’s the crowd. See if you can spot my sister!
There was this whirly-bird sounding alarm thing that went off and started pretty quietly (but audibly) while David was talking and then it got louder so I said “sorry about my cell phone.” The result? Big laughs. Duh!
It’s the coffee I spilled on my pants. In the first five minutes or so I was at work I spilled Sprite Zero on my desk and coffee on my pants. I went into the bathroom and was trying to clean up my pants leg with a wet paper towel—blotting and patting—and someone walked out of a stall and gave me a sympathetic look. I debated saying, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “just peed on my leg,” but I didn’t, even though I sort of wish I had. (wish I had said it. not wish I had peed on my leg. Sometime I’ll tell you about the Bike Riding Incident in Fourth Grade. I know whereof I speak.)
Okay, only because you are begging (note: you aren’t begging). This one’s from the footnote period and for that I’m still sorry.
The Cramps
Galaxy Concert Theatre
Friday, Oct. 27
It was a Goth meat market at the Galaxy on the night the Cramps played this sold-out show. It was impossible to squish your way past any group of people without feeling their unwelcome, eyeliner-rimmed glances. I hate sold-out shows. They’re great for the band, but they suck for the audience. And then I begin to hate everyone. Such as the drunk, PVC-wearing, Goth Bettie Page girl, who really, really, really wanted to talk to the guy seated at the table to my left and who communicated her burning need to talk to him by climbing over me and punching him. And then there was the guy that my roommate and I call—in all seriousness—Civilization Guy because two weekends ago he approached a friend of ours and used this suave1 pickup line: “Civilization—do you think it’s on the ascent or the decline?”2 Actually, Civilization Guy was more fun to watch than the Cramps because of the way he turned the White Man Shuffle into an aerobic activity. Kudos to Civilization Guy! But just when I’d start really getting into his small-windmills-plus-jerky-arrhythmic-leg-lifts, the icky Bettie Page girl would climb over me, and I would be yanked right out of the moment.
“Hey, who’s the sexy old blond?” Rebecca Schoenkopf, a.k.a. Commie Girl, asked me, nodding toward the stage. I told her it was Wally George, but I was lying. The Sexy Old Blond was really the Cramps’ bass player, who wasn’t sexy and whose wig was more pink than blond and who danced around the stage like a flower—if a flower could dance. Each Cramps member has a specific way of moving. Wally George dances like a flower. Guitar player Poison Ivy, who was wearing this bitty little dress that just barely grazed the top of her white, frilly underpants (which appeared to be stuffed with something), stalks the stage in a slow, sultry, deliberate way, which is probably all she can do in those high-heeled boots. And she glares at everyone in this way that is incredibly sexy and very cool and makes me wonder whether in the early days of the Cramps she had to deal with a bunch of well-wishers telling her she should smile and move around more and try to look like she’s having fun up there.3 Snarly singer Lux Interior struts from the back of the stage to the front and then back and then front again. Sometimes he lunges forward, and sometimes he deep-throats the microphone. Also, he throws the microphone stand forward but holds on to the cord, and sometimes he wraps the cord around his neck. He was wearing some kind of non-breathing, shiny, rubbery outfit, in case you’re wondering. As for the drummer, I don’t know; I couldn’t see him.
They opened with “Cramp Stomp” and then tore through a fairly long set of slow, snarly, inspired, groovy, bluesy hits with little patter in between songs. And despite the slow snarliness of it all, there was still a gaggle o’ dickheads in the crowd who moshed. Every now and then, they’d lift one of their own into the air and then pass the human offering forward, where he’d fall, eventually, into the arms of the security guards, who would toss him to the side, where he’d pick himself up, do a lap, and then run back into the pit. All hell briefly broke loose around 10:50 p.m., when the security guards were busy restraining someone. That diversion opened a space for a woman to run onstage and do some kind of menacing wavy arm thing in the direction of a nonplused Ivy. This went on for about three seconds before she was ambushed and carried offstage and more security guards were dispatched.
This was around the time Civilization Guy really began feelin’ it, though, so I couldn’t really tell you what happened onstage next. (Alison M. Rosen)
1. Pronounced “sua-VAY.”
2. She said ascent. I would say the same thing, although I’m a pessimist. Go figure.
3. Because I play in a band and people tell me that all the time, except for the people who say I remind them of Poison Ivy. I like them. I hate everyone else. Did I mention that sold-out shows make me hate everyone?
Only ill-timed considering the nostalgia problem:
“Damn, I miss you. CZ is good–in Austin at the moment. Evidence you’re a great writer: doubt you’re a great writer. You’ve always been–both doubtful and a great writer. Now come home and help us.”
I love being helpful! Damnit!
(Mom and Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t get your hopes up. Perhaps I’ll come visit though)
And did you get any pictures? They said there weren’t going to be any photos allowed which I figured was just as well since my chest was looking kinda blotchy and my non-TV makeup likely wasn’t doing me any favors under those harsher than I expected lights but then there were a zillion flashbulbs happening during the Q&A and I kind of wished I’d gotten a photo with Ross Schwimmer. So if you got some, let me know.
As for how the whole thingamajigiepoo went, it was fun. DSchwim kinda took the reins himself at certain points, leaving me there to fiddle with the microphone and fidget in my seat and strike that fine balance between voicing the jokes going through my head and holding them in—it was about HIM after all—but so much of performing/hosting, and especially TV which this wasn’t so just bear with me while I let this pour out of my head—is about taking control of situations and being the most dominant/dynamic force in the viewfinder and so I quickly realized that the control was being wrested from me and had to then quickly calculate whether to try to get it back. I didn’t, because it wasn’t my TV show, it was just a live Q&A I was asked to moderate and I was providing a service.
My sister thinks it would have looked really bad if I’d grabbed the controls. I think there are people who can do it so effortlessly and instantly that you don’t even really notice.
But still, I think it was a fun time.