Saturday, September 29, 2007

I'm With the Band

So I now have something called Iliotibial Band Syndrome, which makes your knee really hurt. And I have a 20-mile race tomorrow.
So when I went to the running store to pick up the race packet, I asked about this magic bullet knee brace that's supposed to make it all OK. The salesperson gave me a bunch of advice, showed me a good stretch and recommended a foam roller, which I'd been trying to get for a while.
Then, obviously under the influence of glucosomine, I asked about the best way to use the foam roller: "So, you just lie on it and rub it out?"
After that came out of my mouth, I would have hidden myself under a pile of shoes, but I took refuge in my suburban mommy persona, pretending to be someone who couldn't possibly take that remark the wrong way. And he was such a polite young man not to laugh at me. So here's a shoutout to Gotta Run in Pentagon City, cause I did have to run, run so far away.

BTW, got a bunch of late entries in the Haiku contest, which brings the charitable contribution to $22. But as I suspected, the winner is Backstretch, with Behind the Green Door. (Though big points for the Gary Busey and Nastassja Kinski references, y'all!)

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Louche Surf

Back from the beach, and here's the mix: Radiohead, I May Be Wrong, Amnesiac; Screaming Trees, Dime Western, Dust; Lloyd Cole, To the Lions, Don't Get Weird on Me Babe; Noisettes, A Little Destruction, What's the Time Mini Wolf; Alejandro Escovedo, Break This Time, The Boxing Mirror; The New Pornographers, All the Things That Go to Make Up Heaven and Earth, Challengers; Pixies, Gigantic, Death to the Pixies; Hole, Awful, Celebrity Skin; Loretta Lynn, Have Mercy, Van Lear Rose; My Bloody Valentine, Only Shallow, Loveless; X, We're Having Much More Fun, More Fun in the New World; Roxy Music, Mother of Pearl, Stranded.

I was getting into "All the Things" and this little voice in my head started singing along: "We are the 801, we are the central shaft"...well, if you live long enough, it all starts to blend together...

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Another Year Escaping the Mercy Seat

Happy birthday, Nick Cave. (Just a day before mine.)

Gonna keep the contest open til I get back from traveling. Here's another:

They Live
Try on the glasses
Rowdy Roddy had to fight
To get his vision

Monday, September 17, 2007

Bad Lieutenant and Cherry Tree NOW with PRIZES

UPDATE: Hola! Add your entry to the comments, please! The more legit entries, the more I'll up the contribution. (I must confess Backstretch is leading with Behind the Green Door. It just fits, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.)

Movie haiku's an occasional critic pastime, but I never indulged (didn't write poetry for about a dozen years, remember? Yeah, that counts.). But I was looking for a quote from a script and found these. They have a few on obscurities like Buffalo '66 and ...

Bad Lieutenant
big bad lieutenant
spiralling towards the abyss
killed by strawberry

Here's mine:
The House of Mirth
A little too free
Shunned by good society
Drink some chloral tea.

Do you get a hat trick if your haiku rhymes, or does that ruin it? Anyway, I issue a challenge to all my imaginary friends to do movie haiku with the most obscure one you can think of. Extra points for Middle Eastern, Nigerian or Cuban.

UPDATE: There's a prize! A Why A Goat t-shirt and $10 to the cause of your choice, and I hope it's hers.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Spume-Teeth, Sky-Lips

Last night was a partial solar eclipse and turn to the new moon. No one in our place could sleep too well. I finally dozed between about five and six and had this dream: I went up to a bar at Burning Man and poured myself a cup of water from a jug and drank it down. It was cool and good while I was drinking it, but afterward I tasted salt. I asked some of the people nearby: “Was that saltwater?” Yep, a shorthaired, dykey looking woman told me. “Is it going to make me throw up?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she said, patient and canny. “But the good part is, you won’t have to worry about electrolytes the whole time you’re here, since you drank that.”

Then my daughter hopped into my bed and woke me up. I asked her how she’d slept and if she had any dreams. “I dreamed we went to the potion store and you drank a potion, mama, a potion that made you act like a kid.”

“Did you like that?” I asked.

“Not so much,” she said. “You had to have all the princesses, and every time the door buzzer rang you’d go running to the door to get it before I could. And then you played with all my friends instead of playing with me.”

“So what happened next?”

“I got another potion and I put a leaf in it and you drank it and you turned back into my mama.”
Later, I Googled “salt water dream meaning,” though I have a pretty good idea what’s up with the dream. And this Federico Garcia Lorca poem came up. There’s another translation out there, too, but it sucks compared to this one, by A.S. Kline.

The Ballad of the Salt-Water

The sea
smiles far-off.
Spume-teeth,
sky-lips.

‘What do you sell, troubled child,
child with naked breasts?’

‘Sir, I sell
salt-waters of the sea.’

‘What do you carry, dark child,
mingled with your blood?’

‘Sir, I carry
salt-waters of the sea.’

‘These tears of brine
where do they come from, mother?’

‘Sir, I cry
salt-waters of the sea.’

‘Heart, this deep bitterness,
where does it rise from?’

‘So bitter, the salt-waters
of the sea!’

The sea
smiles far-off.
Spume-teeth.
Sky-lips.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Give Up (the Frontal) Already

Why Californication Sucks:
1) No one wants to fuck a writer that bad.
2) No one tells a writer: "Oh, you have the talent of all the muses, and you, you're just squandering it! Oh, write, write, you must serve your talent!" Unless they're a deflated longtime civil servant talking to a bleached-blonde cougar like your narrator at a suburban continuing-ed short-fiction workshop and they want to get laid.
3) And they're married. Bad boy!
4) You don't get a cute little v-cut like that above the ass if you spend your whole life sitting in bars or in your dumb car.
5) Frontal, frontal, who's got the frontal? Once again, burdens fall unfairly upon the women. Sisters, rise above! Or maybe don't. Seems you're always above on this show. Let DD do the work once in a while.
6) Snark-packed script sounds like the writers been stealing from the House trashcans. "Tune in next week, when Hank's dick makes a last-minute, lifesaving diagnosis!"

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

An Alternative Stance on Recent Events

So I write about Washington and erotica, and I ignore this Larry Craigslist thing? Yep, cause it doesn't turn me on. Stinky guy. Also, the erotica is to make money. I'm not going to give it away free, here. If I could find a way to get paid for this kind of kvetching and kvelling, believe me, I would.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Pardon My Dust

I started writing poetry for the first time in a dozen years. Could there be a more useless, ridiculous woman.