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for updates & short takes
Aaarrr! Tonight I went to see a Super Bowl party at the bar where my friend Leigh works. Was extremely let down to find that nothing about this Buccaneers vs. Raiders event was even remotely pirate themed. Nothing. No eyepatches. No shirts like this.
Damn. Who won, anyway?
pounded out by Wendy at 10:41 PM
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Huh? Friday night I was exhausted. I decided to get in bed at around 8 pm. But it seemed every time I was dropping off to sleep the phone would ring. The first two calls, at 8:30 and 10, were from someone I know. I had to call him back and tell him, dude, no: I'm sleeping; no, I'm in for the night; no; see, I called back to say I'm SLEEPING; sorry; yeah; bye. The third call was different, though. It came at 11:30 pm. My Caller I.D. said "CID BLOCKED." I didn't answer, but I was curious enough to check my voice mail a moment later. Sure enough there was a message. I listened. The speaker was mumbly, and hoarse but young-sounding--either a female or a very young male--with... well, not the best speaking and pronunciation skills. The person's either a prank caller or the most incompetent telemarketer in the world:
[initial pause] "Yes. I am notifying you? That... to be on the lookout for your mail? Because we have sent... a fifty-dollar gift card. Passed by the... company of Macintosh... thank you. Please, if you like... if you have any further questions... call 773-768-3096. 773-768-3096. Thank you."
Yeah. I have no idea. Since the person left a local number it's probably not a case of time-zone confusion by some DialAmerica drone on the West Coast. I've called the number a couple of times and all I get is a modem or fax signal. And I'm pretty sure that "The Company of Macintosh" isn't, um... anything. I really can't figure out what the nature of this prank is supposed to be. The nefarious plot, as far as I can tell is: "We tell people we're sending gift cards--only we're NOT! Ha! They'll go to check their mail and find only their actual, legitimate MAIL. Ha! HA!" I mean, is that it?
And is this a personal thing? Who would wish upon me this nightmare of non-materializing-gift-card disappointment? And why? Why?
pounded out by Wendy at 1:40 PM
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Reason #271 To Own a TiVo: When you're really bored you can always pick the remote control to browse through their Programming Guide menu (they call it "TiVolution Magazine") and get all cracked up reading the brief episode descriptions for all the children's shows. A few weeks ago I discovered that lots of mystifying fun can be had by reading just the listings for Teletubbies. This week is no exception:
Running; green; boys roll wheels along a road in India; children ride a sea tractor.
I suspect the random, minimalist hilarity doesn't come through quite as much if you're actually familiar with the shows. But if you're not, the experience of reading these is for all the world like having marijuana smoke wafting gently out of your TV.
Here are some more that I've found:
Bear in the Big Blue House
The gang seeks the magic winter-berry.
Zoom
Tag; vegetable parfait; liquid experiment; shining pennies.
Dora The Explorer
Dora is a little girl who lives inside a computer.
Pappyland
Everyone sees two Pappys.
Baby Looney Tunes
Shadows astound the babies; Tweety and the others celebrate Christmas in July.
Cyberchase
The team must find the missing element in the musical pattern.
Jay Jay the Jet Plane
Jay Jay, Tuffy and Evan help a geologist excavate a crystal; Thanksgiving.
NiNi's Treehouse
Pictures.
Recess
Friends gather at the playground during school recess.
pounded out by Wendy at 1:23 PM
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Ass: The Retraction Oh. God. No. Forget everything I said before. I saw this and now I want to peel my skin off.
pounded out by Wendy at 10:16 AM
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Joe Millionaire's Ass I mean, have you seen it? Did you see it on him last week? When he was standing at the sink? Did you see?
I am almost too shy to discuss it. For example, I will not try to tell you about the underwear, because that makes me bashful. I am embarrassed, frankly. It's usually not like this with me and asses.
But there it was. I had no idea. I'd programmed my TiVo to tape the show, and went for days and days without even knowing it existed. I mean of course it had to exist, because then Joe would look weird without it, but you know. But how patiently it waited for me to see it. Finally, on Thursday I watched the scene in which it appears. I sat there listening to Joe's goofy voice-over commentary about what the woman of his dreams would be like and blah blah blah. Suddenly I thought what was that!? and I had to rewind. I rewound. I saw it. I heard myself make a tiny, involuntary, almost wounded-sounding cry. It was incandescent in its shorts. It was astonishing.
pounded out by Wendy at 5:55 PM
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For anyone who missed the premiere of High School Reunion on Sunday, it's airing again tonight at 7 p.m. on the WB. I think I'd watch it even if I didn't go to school with these people and was paid to write about them.
I finished writing the full episode recap last night, but I can't say if it'll be up on the TWoP site by the time the repeat airs tonight. Keep checking the site and stop by the boards.
pounded out by Wendy at 9:34 AM
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MIKANBOYA is a little orange boy! Exciting journey to be good freezed orange!! Few things make me tingle the way the San-X site does. I've had a thing for Kogepan (The Sourpuss Bread Gone Wrong For Being Burned!) for a while now, but then one day Dana alerted me to the existence of Tissue San and The Shivering Buru Buru Dog, and so we spent the afternoon exploring the site and instant-messaging each other with pages we found: Look! The cheese family! The beer-chan! The what? The hell?
I like that there is much to learn on the San-X site. The character explanations are the best. The freaky genius San-X minds would like you to know that Tomatori was born as a result of a tomato experiment, but "Nobody knows the reason why Tomatori-chan looks like bird though." Also, nobody knows why Kogepan gets drunk on milk. They're happy to explain that Koyainu is a strange, square breed of dog with a roof on its back, but "What if taking off the roof!? It's a secret." Why are those little miniature cats that live in creampuffs inedible? Nobody know! Who is Aotomatori, and what does he like? Nobody know! It does not matter! Life is mystery! Is okay!
pounded out by Wendy at 4:49 PM
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Just wanted to clarify that although this blog is on the front page of the site now, my original journal is still around, and I'll continue to update it when I can.
If you've read me for more than a year or so you'll know that the journal entries have become longer and more essay-like; they're now the sort of pieces that I write when I suspect I have something big to say but don't know what the hell it is yet, and I'll take a couple of days and more than a thousand words to figure it out. It's just not the sort of format that lends itself to to frequent updates, and during times when I've had a lot of other projects going on (like now, when I have this stuff plus a magazine article to work on), it was like sad tumbleweeds were blowing across the front page of my site. So I decided to redesign in a way that makes more sense. With, you know, my busy, hat-tossing, Mary Tyler Moore sassy gal lifestyle.
pounded out by Wendy at 1:19 PM
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At the Meridien Hotel, New Year's Eve: We were on the tenth floor. Leigh figured out that the window in the room opened a few inches near the top; you'd turn the latch and the pane tilted in. It was just right, we thought, for dumping out a bag of confetti over the street. We watched the countdown on TV and then got to work.
What we didn't count on was that the confetti would just slide down the slope of the glass to rest on the windowsill. We closed the window and stared out at the five-inch high pile of confetti sitting there like an abandoned hive. "Oh. Oh, well," we said. We thought it would blow away in a few minutes.
We toasted everyone a Happy New Year. I'd met up with my friend Kristine and another friend for dinner and then I'd taken the subway two more stops to the hotel and there was champagne and this Frenchy hotel to make fun of and it was a good night. Only the confetti on the windowsill didn't move. We kept going back over and tapping the glass. Someone opened the window again and we could hear the roar of lakefront air keening between the tall buildings. We closed the window again, hard. The confetti remained inert. I began to get very anxious. We'd wanted the confetti to toss itself gloriously through the wind like the fucking plastic bag in American Beauty, only of course more deliberately so, which I suppose is a very New Year's Eve kind of concept.
Finally Leigh's sister had the idea to take the sash off the terrycloth hotel bathrobe and dangle it out the window and drag the end of it back and forth across the windowsill. Most of the confetti was dislodged, and went somewhere else, and yay, that's how 2003 started.
pounded out by Wendy at 2:20 PM
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