FOUR PHRASES YOU’LL NEVER HEAR

“Sarah Michelle Gellar’s stellar turn in the title role of Hedda Gabler was marred only by Emily Watson’s ham-fisted portrayal of Julie, the maid.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the People’s Choice Award for Outstanding Rock, Pop, Jazz, R&B, Gospel, Rap, or Klezmer Group of the 20th Century goes to…Genesis!”

“In her latest nonfiction endeavor, Divine Mechanics, Anne Rice explores the ultimate demise of Chaos Theory and academia’s surprisingly conservative return to ‘purist’ Quantum Mechanics.”

“…and Fyvush Finkel as…’The Beaver.'”

In other news, some of you folks take this stuff way too seriously.

Ooh. Pics.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Woman spouts trite cliches for family friend under fire! Sings chorus to The Pretenders “I’ll Stand By You” before confused crowd of diplomats and heads of state!

When Mardi Gras falls in early February–as does this year–it’s sometimes hard to get into the spirit of things. I mean, we’re still cleaning up the house from Christmas and New Year’s, and Superbowl threw the parade schedule off… It just doesn’t seem like Carnival. With any luck, though, getting dolled up for tonight’s Society of St. Ann Ball ought to bring me around. Too bad some of you won’t be around to enjoy it with us. We’ll try to take pictures…

That’s it, really. I’m trying to kill time at my computer ’till you know who wakes up and I can start making noise and getting ready.

Oh, one other thing: it seems we’re going to have a bloody mary breakfast party on Tuesday morning. If you’re in the neighborhood, drop by around 10am.

In other news: Caleb Carr is a whiny twit.

Nude! Nude! Nude! Sodomites!

“I have grown significantly, both personally and professionally, after nearly a decade of raising a family and exploring my craft. I view my appearance in Playboy as the first step in presenting myself to the world as I am.”

— Tiffany

AN AXIS OF EVIL

Right now, at this very moment, someone somewhere is watching Lethal Weapon 3.

That’s not a premonition, it’s not a hunch. It’s a fact. And it is mildly disturbing.

Zen exercise for the day: unearthing pearls of wisdom through anagrams. Apparently, boyfriend is merely another way of saying forbid yen, and sturtle is barely veiled code for let’s rut.

Whoa.

Deep.

[ This message brought to you via one of my favorite poets and the current meatspace edition of a certain magazine–which, coincidentally, features some snazzy artwork from one of our own. ]

Mardi Gras/Superbowl Weekend To-Do List, or
My Dance Card is Suddenly Full

Saturday, 10am: Vote.
Attire: sweats (thinking ahead to Saturday, 10:30am).

Saturday, 10:30am: Hit the gym.
Attire: see Saturday, 10:00am above.
Note: Yes, people actually go there to work out.

Saturday, afternoon: Straighten up the house for next week’s visitor.
Attire: Tignon, white linen top, burlap skirt held on by length of frayed rope.

Saturday, 6:00pm: Traipse over to the Radical Faerie ball.
Attire: Clothing-optional, but highly glittery displays are encouraged–especially those celebrating everyone’s favorite milkmaid–and the party’s namesake–Saint Bridget (although, given the day, this year’s event should rightly be devoted to the often-overlooked Saint John Neumann).

Saturday, 10:00pm: Stumble to the Shim Sham Club to catch a real rock show.
Attire: See Saturday, 6:00pm above. Once I get gussied up, I ain’t changin’.

Sunday, 10:30am: Hit the gym again.
Attire: see Saturday, 10:30am above
Note: I’m not a gymfreek. These are simply the only two days of the week I have time to go. So there.

Sunday, 1:00pm: Light a candle to Saint Dismas for Winona.
Attire: Stolen t-shirt, hot pants.

Sunday, afternoon: Straighten up some more for next week’s visitor.
Attire: see Saturday, afternoon above.

Sunday, 6:00pm: Schlep over to the Petronius Ball.
Attire: Black tie or fancy dress or anything I can squeeze my fat ass into that’s going to be comfortable for the three hours I have to sit and watch drunken queens parade in sequins and set themselves on fire.

I spent the weekend in Mississippi with my father and one of my brothers. We ate comfort food at “homey” restaurants and talked a lot about my mother, who just can’t seem to get her act together. We spoke about the farm and about our grandparents–my dad’s mother and father–whom we all miss. We told the same stories about relatives and cattle and farmhands that we’d told dozens of times before. We sat on the back porch and looked at the stars, which we could see because there aren’t enough streetlights in town to muck up the view of the night sky. I lamented the fact that I didn’t pay more attention to my grandmother when she pointed out the constellations to me as a kid–but not to the point of being maudlin.

As I was leaving, I drove around town a bit, over to the street where I grew up. I almost got lost trying to find it. I’d lived there ’till I was in 4th grade and returned to hang out with friends from the neighborhood well into high school, but now it looks as strange and foreign as St. Louis or Pittsburgh or Charleston.

I stopped by the cemetary to see my grandparents, too. I’m not really the sentimental type, but I like going to see them, especially when there’s no one else in the cemetary. They’re buried on the side of a lake, which is a good place to sit when the weather’s nice.

Mississippi’s landscape isn’t particularly pretty. In the winter, all you can see is the pine trees, gangly and tall, with stark, graceless branches. The land undulates a bit, but just enough to be called “hilly.” It’s lush, but it doesn’t have the character, the soupy, shadowy, big-leafed mystery that south Louisiana does, though they’re just a few miles apart. Mississippi is a plain, no-nonsense kind of pretty, like a well-formed Pentacostal girl on Sunday morning, or your memories of your mother after she’d been working in the garden: nice, but not necessarily something you’d want to grow old with.