I own a cat now.
I have inherited my grandmother’s six-or-seven year old (we think) cat. I took her home yesterday, whereupon she immediately found some blankets to hide out in. When I got home from my radio show today she had done some exploring; she made it into the deepest recesses of my bedroom closet.
I’m sure she’s just getting used to the fact that she no longer lives in a dark, dark, hot, hot house inhabited by elderly people.
For this new stage of her life I think it’s only appropriate that she get a new name. The trouble is that all the things I would normally want to name a girl cat–Meatballs, Bambi, Corin Tucker–seem inappropriate for a quiet and gracefully aging lady that spent most of her life living with my grandmother. I was thinking of maybe calling her Nancy Sinatra; my boyfriend says that might be too gay, though. The only other idea I had was Miss Trudy.
Feel free to offer suggestions if you have any. She’s six or seven, grayish, and rather reserved. I haven’t been able to get a photo yet.
Filed under: art, books, gay, heterosexuals, hookers, in praise of athletic beauty, internet, movies, music, personal, tv | Tags: books, child prostitution, complaining, cumshots, feminism, gael garcia bernal, google, google buzz, kathleen hanna, lukas moodysson, making money online, maria bamford, michael winterbottom, new hampshire, news, olympics, pet shop boys, prostitutes, steven miller, surfing, television, the killer inside me, videos, wriggling around in excrement
Nearly one third of juveniles taken in by police for prostitution are treated as criminals and not as victims.
Does feminism need a rallying cry?
Michael Winterbottom’s new film The Killer Inside Me apparently features a lot of violence against women, so much so that people apparently walked out during the Berlin Film Festival. But the director points out that violence ought to be ugly, and that the gross thing to do would be to present it as entertainment. Winterbottom’s made wonderful adaptations of Thomas Hardy (Jude) and Sterne (Tristram Shandy). His heroes are usually kind of assholes (see also: 24 Hour Party People), and he’s made some movies about some very violent situations (The Road To Guantanamo, A Mighty Heart) so I’m not very surprised this is happening.
Gael Garcia Bernal has a thing for a Thai prostitute in Lukas Moodysson’s new film Mammoth.
Speaking of films, This Recording has an essay by Liz Colville about Blue Crush, the Kate Bosworth surfing movie that I hold very near and dear to my heart.
This week I discovered and immediately fell in love with Seattle photographer Steven Miller’s cumshot photography. While a few of his more romantic photographs come across as kinda hokey, “There Are No Accidents,” from his Reclamations series, is really a thing of beauty.
The Pop Chart’s on! Listen here, and follow along as I count down the top 40 here.
Above is “The Brothel” by Susanne Sundfør, which is debuting at #39 this week. It’s quiet and pretty and Norwegian. I really like it!
Filed under: music, tv | Tags: eurovision, jenny silver, melodifestivalen, sweden
Melodifestivalen is the competition by which Sweden annually chooses its entrant into the Eurovision contest. It’s a big deal, with songs competing for dominance via a viewer voting system and really elaborate rules and rounds and wild cards and things I’m not actually invested enough to understand.
I’ve never followed Melodifestivalen closely*, but I do check the Swedish singles charts every two weeks or so** and the program has a pretty big weekly impact on the charts. Last week I was pretty convinced that I would be rooting for Linda Pritchard’s Ricky Martin-ish “You’re Makin’ Me Hot Hot Hot,” because the title is irresistible and the almost “Mambo No. 5″-like percussion track makes me giddy.
But now I think I might have a new favorite:
Filed under: music | Tags: future bible heroes, Stephin Merritt, technology
I woke up singing this song today, which must mean I’m in a good mood; though I still listen to the Magnetic Fields quite frequently, I tend to neglect the Future Bible Heroes. Not because they’re any less good, but because all their music I have is on CD-Rs that were burnt from other people’s collections. And my CD-R wallets are all neglected now, too. Oh, technology.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: lessons in being classy, macaroni and cheese
Here’s what you do:
1. Start with 1 box of supermarket-brand Macaroni and Cheese. (Annie’s also works; Kraft does not, for some reason.)
2. Make according to instructions. Boil it until it’s done, in other words. Then add the cheese bag.
3. Instead of 1/4c milk add 1/4c plain yogurt. This will make it creamier.
4. Instead of 1/4c butter add 1/4c ricotta cheese. This will make is creamier and also better for you.
5. Add stuff! I add Tapatio (approx. 4 shakes) and flax seeds; it ends up super thick, so the seeds give it a little bit of texture without really altering the flavor.
6. Voila! You now have a store-bought box of mac n cheese that appears to be a hearty meal and not just a thing from a box. It’s also still pretty cheap, which is probably a concern if you’re eating store-brand mac and cheese in the first place.
(image via)
Filed under: gay | Tags: beach party, blogs, lake rats & smokers, spookiness, the internet
I admire people who can stick to a concept, especially when it comes to blogging. The gloomy joke behind Garfield Without Garfield may eventually wear thin after a while, but whoever writes it doesn’t seem to care; conceptual bloggers keep doing their thing until one day when they stop and move on to something else. That takes dedication. (Even if it’s just a ploy to get a giant book deal it still takes dedication.) And actually, I think that level of dedication is way more intriguing than the content. For instance, one soul’s commitment to commenting on the wardrobe choices of every single episode of Roseanne is way more interesting than that particular blog’s sometimes lackluster commentary.
My newest blog fixation is a blog called Lake Rats & Smokers, which was recommended to me by my Google Reader. It’s on Tumblr and it’s been around for maybe six months. It’s run by someone who may or may not be named JJ Bobson. There’s no “about” section on the site and he doesn’t write any commentary with the photos he posts. You can’t e-mail this person, whoever he is, and even Googling the name JJ Bobson comes up with few clues, unless he’s a hundred-year old scientist. For someone internet savvy enough to (maybe) start a Tumblr under their own name there’s a surprisingly thin trail of internet crumbs. (more…)
Filed under: personal, shameless self-promotion | Tags: complaining, me me me me me
So, I have a problem.
I am constantly (or, okay, occasionally) sending out story pitches and ideas for projects to people I don’t actually know, because up to this point most of the stuff I’ve written has been on a very local level and I’m trying to branch out. And, for some reason, every e-mail I send it almost exactly the same, even though the strategy never ever works and also it’s not a strategy so much as this thing I inadvertently do a lot. But here’s the gist of every e-mail, more or less: (more…)
Filed under: gay, in praise of athletic beauty, music | Tags: album covers, the associates
The world is so full of terrible album covers that it’s occasionally worth reminding ourselves about the good ones.
I bought the Associates’ 1980 album The Affectionate Punch maybe five years ago at a used record store; the record sleeve was extremely sexy, I thought, and the song titles (“A Matter of Gender,” “A”, “Would I…Bounce Back”) sounded like the kind of stuff that might sound maybe Gang Of Four-like.
It’s a really good album, and the Scottish duo have since become one of my favorite groups; a lot of their later stuff suffers from heavily dated production, but this one’s got those so-called guitars that were big at the time, and singer Billy Mackenzie’s voice is crazily operatic, not as effete as Jimmy Somerville’s (say) but pretty dramatic nonetheless.
David Bowie fans may also know of them: their first single, rush-released in 1979, was a cover of “Boys Keep Swinging” that was sneakily put out the week before Bowie’s original version was.
After the jump, some tunes:
Why is that not the title of a porn movie yet?
Anyway, even though Craigslist is the fucking worst, I placed another ad for models for the Super Secret Project That I Can’t Talk About Yet. (Responses were kinda hilarious the first time I tried, so…) And I just learned that now apparently the word “shoots” is verboten. As in, “I am arranging photo shoots for the week of…” Not allowed. At all.
