stella!!!!

my mother is driving me crazy. i'm sure this is not news, but here is the latest in her campaign to send me to the nuthouse.
first, some background. years ago we rented this movie called stella starring bette midler. i honestly don't remember too much about it except that there was this one part where she was dressed in a brightly-colored flashy outfit and we said, she looks just like patsy (my sister-in-law's mother)! because she acted really flamboyant like patsy did, too. come to think of it, patsy would have fit in really well at a pride parade, if only she'd been a man. but i digress. anyhow, mom said she wanted to see that movie again, so i put it on their netflix queue.

well she calls me up saying she watched stella but it is not the same movie we watched before. i say, yes it is. it had bette midler in it, didn't it? she says, yes, but she only dressed up like patsy one time, and i remember when we watched it before she dressed that way all through the movie and she went swishing around on the boardwalk. (much emphasis on the word "swishing.") i say, i remember her being dressed up once, but i don't think she dressed like that all through the movie, and i don't recall anything about swishing around on a boardwalk. i think you have this mixed up in your mind with another movie.
she says, no! because the stella we watched last night was a movie i had never seen before. she says, maybe there are two movies named stella with bette midler and this was the wrong one. can you look it up?

i pull up imdb.com, all the while telling her that there are NOT two movies named stella starring bette midler. i get a list of all the movies named stella (suprisingly there are quite a few. popular name.) and go through eliminating them based on the years they were made (the ones before 1968: too early, the ones after 1999: too late, the one in 1982: east german). we were left with only one stella starring bette midler.

so my mom says, the name of the movie we watched must not have been stella. it must have been something else. i told her, when you think of whatever it is, let me know, and i will add it to netflix.

i am not holding my breath.

adventures in internet dating

my friend scott, having recently broken off a very long-term relationship, is now trying internet dating. he's had a go at several sites, one which he promptly dropped when he found his ex on it, but has settled, i think, on e-harmony. now i have personal issues with e-harmony which i won't go into, but i also have problems with its way of matching people. like i need a personals site to arrange a romance for me. just let me look at the damn profiles and pick for myself. i have a much better idea of what i want than some random computer program. e-harmony constantly hooked me up with lawyers and software engineers when all i want are writers and musicians. but maybe e-harmony knows i'm broke and was looking out for my best interest.

i ended up on yahoo personals where after countless bad dates i finally changed my profile to say exactly who i was looking for: creative types who could make me laugh. and if they didn't read, that was a deal breaker. there was more, but that was the gist of it.

so then i got more of what i was actually looking for. funny how that works. and the last boy who wrote to me is the one i'm living with now. so these things work out sometimes.

but when they don't...it can be anything from boring to excrutiating.

scott says, i'm surprised how often people lie on these sites. oh yeah, they lie. they almost always lie.

first off, you can count on men being two inches shorter than they claim to be. across the board. and the pictures? people will drag up the absolute best picture they can possibly find. always. sometimes it's from MANY years ago. and if you only see a guy in a hat in his pictures, you can bet he's bald.

oh, and here's one of the biggest lies. some of these people are already in relationships, and they're just looking for a little something extra to spice up their life. They have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, so unless you're sure, you need to ask.

here's a tip for seattle women. if you're going on a date, bring money. for some reason, men here have a thing against picking up the tab. i don't know if they think we're liberated or if they're just totally cheap, but you can't expect a guy to buy you dinner or even coffee.

i mean, there were so many times i met a guy in a coffeehouse and showed up after he'd already gotten his coffee, and he didn't offer to pay for mine. if i'd asked somebody on a date, even a coffeehouse date, i'd have gotten their coffee. but that's not such a huge deal. then there was dutch treat bob.

first off, bob was one of those people whose photos did not match the bob of today. it didn't even look remotely like the same person. strike one.

we met to play pool and bob brought his own cue, except he didn't know how to play. seriously, he wasn't any better than me and i pretty much suck. BUT THEN he tries to give me pointers, probably so he can touch my hands. i'm highly annoyed by pointers, especially when they come from someone who doesn't know what they're doing. well we finally finish maybe two games of pool which takes FOREVER because we both play so badly. then bob wants me to go to dinner. i really don't know why i agreed. maybe i was hungry. who knows? but i say yes. so he suggests thai or pho and since i don't know what pho is, i go with thai. (as an aside, i am glad i like thai food because almost every guy i went out with wanted to go for thai.)

i didn't know any thai places in the area and, of course, bob didn't because he was from issaquah, so i suggested going to a place near my house that's good. said he could follow me over there. normally, i would park at my house and walk, but i didn't want bob to know where i lived, so i parked near the restaurant. bob can't find a spot, so i have to get in his car and help him look for parking. when i get in, i don't put the seatbelt on because we are going maybe a block, but bob says, i'm going to have to insist that you put the seatbelt on. what is he, my mother?

so we get parked and walk to the restaurant and he tries to HOLD MY HAND! i tell him he's being too presumptuous and take my hand back. so we get to the restaurant and over dinner he regales me with tales of how smart he is (he's in mensa) and how poor he was growing up. blah blah blah. so the bill comes and he says, can i ask you to pick up your half this time? And i'm thinking, WHAT? i've never been asked to pick up a tab for a date. never. (coffee thing notwithstanding.) so i go, ok. he tells me my half is about ten bucks, so i fork it over. i notice he also snags both andes mints from the tip tray. greedy bastard.

so then we head back to the car and he tries to hold my hand again. i don't remember how i got out of that one. but then when we get to my car, he TRIES TO KISS ME. so i turn and give him cheek. then get in my car and leave. quickly. and make sure i'm not followed.

the next day i get an email from him saying what a great time he had and how he'd like to see me again. i'm thinking, was he on the same date that i was on? so i wrote him back and said that i thought he was nice but i wasn't feeling a connection and thought we should "nip it in the bud." i actually used those words. but i thought it was much better than what guys do which is dissappear and never call you again. i thought it best to just tell the truth. well, actually, to be kind. he probably wouldn't have liked it if i'd told him what i really thought.

i guess if he reads this he'll know. but then what are the chances?

the pink ranter

so the fed ex man came today with my brand new pink razr phone. i was pretty excited. had to go through a bunch of voicemail hell to set the thing up. then i notice that verizon has me signed up for the wrong plan. so i have to call and get that changed. then i go to set up voice mail and i get a message that i'm being sent to the "roam plus network" and i need to get out my credit card because this call is gonna cost me. big time. i'm going, what the hell? i've used my old phone in my house plenty of times and have never been charged extra. i live well within the city limits of seattle. definitely not what you'd consider to be outside the verizon network. at least you wouldn't think so. so since i'm not about to pay to call my voice mail, i get my regular phone and call verizon customer service instead. turns out they haven't programmed my phone properly. so they get it fixed and i call my voice mail. course when i hear my voice on the voice mail, i figure out that i don't need to set up voice mail after all. what a relief because i hate trying to get "the perfect message." mine always sound lame, but i will record them over and over and over until i get one that sounds at least a little less lame than the ones before. tell me i'm not the only one with this problem.

anyway, downloading ringtones was another debaucle i don't even want to get into. finally got some i like even if they aren't the ones i really wanted.

have to wait till tomorrow to deal with my "hold music." there's only so much cell phone setup i can handle in one day.

all in all, i think the phone's pretty cool, although it lacks some of the features my last phone had which is kind of a letdown. i have to say that i think the best thing about it is its pinkness.

oh, and it's a good thing i didn't sign up for that v cast plan where you get videos and music and crap on your phone. it only works with windows systems. have i mentioned how sick i am of seeing that message? why do so many companies decide to treat mac users like second-class citizens?

food fight

i will admit to certain eccentricities when it comes to food. first off, i'm one of those picky people. you know the kind who goes through picking out anything "weird" that they don't want to eat. like carrots, for instance. my boyfriend will catch me standing over the trash can tossing carrots from soup before i eat it. this disturbs him. not only is it wasting food with which he has a huge problem, but i'm pretty much losing whatever nutrition i might have gotten out of said soup.

see, also i kind of have a thing against vegetables. which is quite difficult to maintain when you live with a vegetarian. i sort of figured if i didn't try and make him eat meat, he wouldn't bother me about eating vegetables, but it doesn't work that way. he doesn't try and get me to eat ONLY vegetables, mind you. he just wants me to eat some. like every day.

also, he says things like green beans and mushrooms aren't vegetables, but i say that i consider them to be. they are vegetable-like.

well, anyhow, he's always made fun of what he calls my "food arranging." how i like to mix my pasta with the sauce or get my salad evenly coated with dressing. how i have to have an even distribution of butter or jam. and especially what he calls my "perfect bite" wherin i pick up little pieces of different foods (for instance, with Thai food: chicken, baby corn, and rice) and eat them at once.

ok, admittedly, when you write it down, it does seem kind of crazy.

but the other day topped everything. he comes into the kitchen after i had eaten lunch. i'd told him i'd had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. so he goes, what's that bowl in the sink? i say, i used that to mix the peanut butter and jelly together. he FREAKS out. like this is sacrilegious. he backs against the door. no! he says. you can't DO that. that's wrong. you put the peanut butter on one side and the jelly on the other. i say, NO! that's wrong. then the peanut butter is all blicky. it's better my way. well, we go on like this for about five minutes.

then then next morning he comes downstairs and there is milk on a bowl on the counter. he says, what's this? i say, i'm making cereal. he says, WHAT? i say, yeah, i pour the milk in first so the cereal stays crispy. he goes on about how that can't possibly be the case and how wrong it is to do it this way, but i've done it both ways and i know i'm right.

well, he took a poll among people he works with and they agreed with him. but they are musicians and can't be trusted.

i will admit that how i do things may not be normal. but i'd be hard pressed to find anything normal about him either. that's why we belong together. it takes one to know one.

netflops

ok, this is what you don't do. you don't let your parents get on the internet.

scratch that. you don't let your parents get on the computer. at all. ever. except maybe to play hearts. my dad seems to be able to handle that task.

but you can't sign your parents up for something like netflix and expect them to manage it themselves. this would be a fatal error.

see, my sister and i had this brilliant idea to sign my folks up on netflix for father's day last year. we'd foot the bill for six months and then after that they were on their own. we figured they'd be hooked by then. and they are. my dad loves not having to deal with going to the video (pronounced VEE-DEE-O for some unknown reason) store. he likes getting the handy little dvds in the mail and then sending them back, no muss, no fuss. (however, for some bizzare reason, he refuses to send back any dvds until all of them are watched so he can put them all in the mail at once. this sort of defeats the purpose of the three at a time deal, but he's pretty hard to reason with on some things. we have since switched to the one dvd at a time plan.)

well, the one caveat of the whole endeavor was that i had to be in charge of adding movies to their queue so they'd have a constant supply because, as i mentioned, they cannot be trusted on the internet.

well, today i was awakened with a frantic phone call from my mom telling me that i'd fallen down on my job because dad had gotten an email that there were no more movies in the queue (qway as he pronounced it. did i mention that my father has a doctorate in education? but he is from mississippi.). anyhow, he gets on the phone and tells me he's tried to go on the internet (NO!) but he can't get on the netflix site with his password because they want him to have one with more than four letters. makes no sense because his password only has four letters so i instruct him how to get to the netflix site. (takes about five minutes) then get him to the member sign in area (another five minutes). finally we get to the point where he can browse movies.

oh, by the way, i have to add that he wanted to know if he could print out a list of the thousands of movies netflix offers. i said, uh, no. why do you want to? he says so he can take it to my mom and read it to her and they can decide what they want to see. i say, wouldn't it just be easier to have mom in the room when you are on netflix deciding what you want to watch? he says, yeah, well, sometimes she's taking a nap when i want to do this. i say, i guess you need to schedule a time when she's available.

well anyhow, we get to browsing the netflix top 100 and i'm telling my dad if he wants to add a movie to his queue, he needs to click the little "add" icon. well he does it and it takes him to another screen where they're trying to push other movies because this is how netflix operates. he freaks out. but then figures out how to get back to the list. adds another movie, gets sent to the other movie promo page again, and, yep, freaks out again. he repeats this process about five times before he's ready to blow a gasket. he says, excuse me while i cuss. but he doesn't actually cuss. which i thought was kind of funny.

anyhow, i asked if he wanted me to pick the movies for him, and he said he'd appreciate it if i would. so now i'm stuck picking movies again. i ought to tell my sister it's her turn, but she'd play the baby card on me and tell me she doesn't have time.

it's really kind of difficult to pick out movies for your parents. at least it is for my parents. i'm thinking, no, that one has a lot of sex, they shouldn't see that. or that one is about drugs, they shouldn't watch it. it's like i'm trying to censor what they watch. but really, it boils down to the fact that these movies are selected by me, and and i don't want them watching certain scenes knowing that i've seen them and endorsed them.

so i have a really hard time selecting movies. i mean, i'm not going to send them 9 1/2 weeks no matter how great i thought it was. but i am running out of films along the lines of good will hunting.

i welcome any suggestions.

brush with fame

tonight i'm heading out to a guide to visitors over at the uw bookstore. not telling a story this time though, so i can relax and just enjoy the show. although truth be told, i prefer the nights when i'm telling a story. i am kind of all about having an audience.

so the deal with a.g.t.v. is that people tell true stories on a given theme. they run about 15 minutes each and you don't use any notes. it's meant to be like telling a story to a friend, except that there's usually a paying audience. usually it's at the jewel box theatre in the rendezvous, but tonight at the uw bookstore it's free. whee! anyhow, the stories are usually pretty entertaining because it's a curated show, not an open mic deal.

tonight's theme is "brush with fame." i figured i could probably come up with a cobbled together story featuring exploits from my time in la, but i've done stories at the last two shows and figured maybe it was time for a break.

but i do have a very good brush with fame story that i do sort of wish i was telling tonight, so i thought i'd tell it here anyhow. it's known in certain circles as "the gary busey incident."

so this was probably a good six years ago when i was living in la and still speaking to my ex-friend tricia. tricia, robin (a former work friend), and i were hanging out in this supper club owned by some hollywood a-listers. i think sean penn was one. i don't remember who-all else the place belonged to. anyhow, it was the new cool place at the time. and it had a cigar room. this was back when cigars were all the rage.

for some ungodly reason, we were hanging out in the cigar room. we'd met some guys who were plying us with drinks and i was happy to imbibe. well, after a while, somebody points out gary busey a couple tables over from us. i kept saying that i was going to go over and talk to him, but somehow, the group managed to keep me in my seat. with the promise of more cocktails, i suspect.

eventually, we decide to leave and go somewhere else, and me being me, i have to go to the bathroom. as i'm leaving the bathroom, who is waiting in the vestibule but GARY BUSEY. well, none of my friends are around so i figure this is my shot. so i walk up to him and i go (loudly, of course) GARY! I LOVED YOU IN CARNY! and he goes, oh, thank you. (i think. i really can't remember his end of the conversation too clearly...) and this part of the story gets a little fuzzy. i just remember that my friends spotted me and rushed over to yank me away from g.b. and he was also trying to extricate himself from the situation. but i was determined to get in a last word so i said, HEY, GARY, STAY OFF THE MOTORCYCLES! before i was whisked away.

it was not one of my finest moments.

and it is not the reason why i don't drink anymore. but remembering things like that make me glad that i don't. oh sure, i'm still liable to say something stupid to somebody like gary busey. but at least i'll be able to reconstruct the conversation.

then again, my memory isn't what it used to be, so maybe not.

i am curious, pink

so i'm caught up in the hype. i just ordered a pink razr to replace my falling apart cell phone. i really don't know much about it other than a. it looks super high tech and b. it's PINK! i was just thrilled to find out that i could get one for only thirty bucks from verizon because of their deal where they give you $100 towards a new phone every two years provided you sell your soul to them again for another couple years. there's no way to get a cheap cell phone without brokering a deal with the devil. but what the hell. i need cell phone service, and i want a supercool pink phone. so i signed up.

i think this thing is supposed to have a better quality camera in it. like anyone is taking high-quality photos with their telephone. but i will say that the camera phone was a great invention and i was thrilled when i got my first one a couple years back. i was wantonly taking pictures of whatever till i got over the novelty. now i only use it occasionally for what i believe is the camera phone's true purpose: the moments in life when you wish you had a camera. like when you see a trash can at the fair marked "doo doo only." or when you see a restaurant called "louie's cuisine of china."i am still cursing the fact that the peepsmoblie came through town back in the days before i had a camera phone. i sure would like to have a photo of that bus with the giant peep on top. just to send to my sister. we share a disdain for peeps that goes back to childhood, which is why i do things like send her peeps for random occasions and signed her up for the peeps fan club. don't worry, she has her own ways of torturing me.



anyhow, i can't wait for my fancy newfangled phone to arrive. it may take upwards of five business days. i'd say that means next friday. i hope my current phone can keep hanging on by its one hinge till then.

oh and i didn't sign on for the cell phone insurance plan because i figured out it would cost me $170 over two years. so i hope this thing holds up better than the last one.

i'm a loser, baby

so i went to the salon of shame instead of gloria steinem. i knew i would. i just liked to think that i might decide otherwise. unfortunately, it was a bust. it's usually standing room only and packed with people itching to read. i distinctly recall someone had to be booted off stage last time for going on too long and not giving other people a shot. this time it was the opposite problem. there were exactly two readers, one of whom was yours truly. of course, i am always thrilled to get a shot at the limelight, but would've liked to have more of an actual show.

they were nice enough to give everybody their money back though, so that was cool. i felt bad though because my friend karen had wanted to hear this talk on parallel universes next door at town hall if the g.s. thing didn't pan out. i felt like i led her astray. but at least we had a few laughs, and i had a shirley temple and a little of karen's husband josh's calamari. and i figure if i hadn't been there, they'd have only had one reader and that really would have been sad.

last night i read from my journal about misadventures with various radio djs when i was in high school. so the weirdest thing that happened was this dude came up to me after the show and said, 'tyx' was that 94 tyx? and i'm stunned that someone recognized the radio station, so i say, how did you know? and he says, i'm from mississippi. you must be from jackson, right? and i say, around there, yeah. he says he's from choctaw county somewhere (i've no clue where that is). but he assures me that he doesn't know any of the people i wrote about. of course, i imagine he would have recognized one of the dj's names if i hadn't used initials in my journal, so i'm glad i did.

i figured i'd be anonymous all the way up here in seattle, but lo and behold, who'd have thunk a home boy would be in the audience? made me feel a little paranoid about being so open with my humiliating stories. not enough to stop, mind you, but a little paranoid nonetheless.

conflict of interest

the trouble with seattle is that sometimes there is too much to do here. it will often happen that two events you really want to attend are happening at the same time in different places. what to do? it comes down to a question of preference. which writer do you REALLY want to see? which band do you REALLY want to hear? tonight is a case in point. gloria steinem is speaking at town hall, but just down the road there's a salon of shame going on. now here are the variables: gloria steinem is sold out and my friend karen and i don't have tickets. however, that has never deterred me from going to a show in the past. in seattle, you can usually depend on the kindness of strangers in a sold out situation. people inevitably have extra tickets and they will generally give them to you free if they find out you need one. there's a reason seattle has a reputation for being nice. so anyhow, i figure there's a decent chance we can get in, especially since the tickets were free and there are bound to be no shows. however, there's no telling how many people will have my idea.

but then there's the salon of shame. people read their teenage journal entries, unsent letters, bad poetry, and other embarrasing writing from their youth. it makes for some of the most hilarious entertainment money can buy. and it only costs a buck if you're willing to humilate yourself by sharing your own childhood stupidity, which, of course, i am. (anything to save a few bucks.)

so the perhaps once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the feminist icon gloria steinem or the opportunity to laugh and be laughed at that happens only every couple of months and is so freaking hilarious that i hate to miss a single show.

gloria steinem. salon of shame. am i a feminist? am i a loser who likes to laugh at other losers?

tough choice.

maybe i'll toss a coin.