Friday, March 31, 2006

Week in review.

Yesterday morning greeted me with an 8AM dental appointment. Within 3 hours of having my teeth cleaned, I had consumed somewhere around 4 - 6 Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs, not to be confused with the more benign Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. It must have been my ID showing the dental hygienist who's the boss of my mouth and although she might poke and prod me until I bleed, but there will be sugar coating these gums, eroding away at all the hearty fluoride goodness she can lather on.

Brick, debut film from Rian Johnson, opens today - but only if you live in NYC or LA. If you don't, watch out for it the one week it opens at that one art house in your city, you know, the one that also serves beer and wine but has no parking? Film noir goes to high school. Fast-talking (on the order of Gilmore Girls) ensemble cast includes Lukas Haas as The Pin and Richard Roundtree (Shaft) in a pretty awesome cameo as the vice principal. I'm thinking about paying to see it again.



Finally, all you philandering blog readers of the male persuasion - watch out! This website might just out you if the woma(e)n in your life thinks it'll really teach you if she posts your picture and details your crimes on Don't Date Him Girl.com. Yep, first we could check online to see if the new neighbor's ankle bracelet has anything to do with molesting children. Now we can also find out if he banged his secretary.



Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Long time, no blog.


I have returned from lands uncharted, both literally and figuratively. Not really literally but there is a lot of new development in Southwest Austin. Although I've been back from the land of cheap and delicious food, drink and band boys for over a week, I didn't even take my suitcase upstairs when I returned, but instead packed up 40% of the contents of my apartment to dogsit for a week. In addition to devouring obscene quantities of queso and doing my laundry for free, I read Merrill Markoe essays while juggling both the procrastination on and the execution of writing a take home exam and a final paper. It was out of control. Also out of control was what happened when I moved back into my apartment Monday to find myself buried under mounds of articles and clean clothes while I polished off the last set of revisions on a paper my advisor and I are trying to get published. The first two days of my official Spring Break were spent running errands and locating my bedroom floor. It went well and I'm feeling good. I still don't have food to eat (aside from the 3 lbs of chocolate I purchased this afternoon), but buttons have been resewn onto various apparel, shoes have been delivered to the shoe hospital, my car is sporting brand spanking new floor mats, people with birthdays will be receiving packages, electricity and gas will continue to reach my apartment for the next month, my left knee has been X-rayed and has a date with an MRI technician, and this time tomorrow, my teeth will be freshly cleaned.

Whew. No wonder I put this stuff off.

In other news, letting Honorable Mention go was definitely the way to go. Frontrunner has proven himself to be like, I don't know, pretty fucking great. I have to type and post this quickly, before my own nausea overtakes me, but here goes:

I return from SXSW and give him a call that afternoon, feeling out whether he remembers our having made plans for that evening. He does. He's made reservations for 8:30. He also gave me a rose when I got there and didn't understand my reference to the Bachelor upon receiving it.

Wednesday night we see a show and get dinner. I fall asleep at his place and end up leaving later than I had anticipated. My phone is missing. He walks me to my car - which, because it's so late/early, has garnered itself a parking ticket. He takes care of the ticket and gives me the main number for the cab company we used to get to and from the show. Waking up at 10:30 the next morning to find my phone, I have an email from him indicating that not only has he tracked down our cab driver, but has located my phone and is having it delivered back to him. "Okay, that's pretty impressive," you might say, "but no need to get carried away here." Well, you might say that until I told you that what happened next was that he had my phone delivered, by courrier service, to where I was dogsitting. My phone and lunch that is. Insane! Easily the nicest thing in recent memory anyone has done for me.

Later I tell my dad about this exchange and he's duly impressed. When we get off the phone he says he's happy for me. It was unexpectedly weird. My grandmother has a different reaction, "Well, Kelly - usually you tell me what's going on with guys and I always think they aren't doing the right thing , but this guy is doing ALL the right things. . . And so I'm confused."

So anyway, it's cool. I think. I must say I thought I was really into having a boyfriend, but I didn't quite realize how much I liked being decidedly single either. I also find myself doing puzzling things. Six weeks ago I didn't know how to use text messaging. Now, if were reading a book or watching a movie about my behavior, the cheesy things I type into my phone would cause me to groan audibly. Maybe even throw the book across the room.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Week in review: High Dudgeon Edition

SXSW: Come for the music, stay for the food.

Turns out, impersonating the classic chicken with its head cut off for the last month was really effective for spending the week enjoying some scrumptious bands and delicious foods. In high school, my colleagues and I created “The List,” a dichotomous indicator of whether or not non-drinking, non-smoking, and certainly non-sex-having teenagers such as ourselves considered someone fornication partner worthy. In the interest of time this week, Kara and I resorted to indicating front people of bands who are decidedly NOT on the list. I’m currently developing a salacious, objectifying, but-also-awesome, calendar of all the swoon-worthy crooners we’ve lusted over throughout the festival.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: The food here kicks ass – and not just in the shredded beef, dead cow sort of way. There are so many moderately priced, moderately casual, dining venues where delicious, delicious combinations of things vegetable and fish are served. Last night I seriously considered moving here because the food is so damn good.

In old business, I sent a very diplomatic email to Honorable Mention. He responded with a really gracious reply that made me hope I was breaking it off with the right guy. I’m glad I ended it before anyone’s feelings got hurt, but I can’t say that I didn’t write the last post without the hope that a resounding cry of, “ignore the problem until it goes away!” would rise from the comments section.

As promised in the title, fodder for annoyance.

Yesterday Kara and I went to this party where some California bands played and we got free fish tacos, drinks, hair products and rubber bananas (I know, sorta weird). A handful of bands played – one I’m a big fan of, one I’ve heard of, one I hadn’t, and one that, as I had told Kara, I liked their music, but not their personalities. Yesterday morning was a prime example of why they have personality cancer. This band is a three person girl band composed of young hipsters who have very important fathers in the music industry. I don’t want to mention any names but their initials are “The Like.” I saw them in December and kept getting annoyed by Z’s, the lead singer, penchant for saying “fuck” in seeming compensation for being about 6 years shy of the modal audience member age. They were the last band slated to go on at brunch yesterday. They take about 20 minutes to set up, about 700 to tune their (3) instruments, and they sing one song, through which Z’s voice kind of cracks a little – which, judging by the glances and smiles exchanged between she and bassist Charlotte, is hilarious. Z then reports that she’s lost her voice, she can’t “do this,” and Charlotte chimes in that she has laryngitis while they remove their guitars. The intimate crowd consistingly largely of bands that have already performed and have waited around to be nice plus “industry” people look around awkwardly before some good natured people that appear to be less annoyed start chanting “one more song!” Z remarks that she likes their enthusiasm, but she “just can’t do it” and also, “Fuck you, banana people!” aimed toward the balcony, where people had been (appropriately, I felt), tossing the rubber bananas onstage during their performance. Here’s the deal. One would think that these girls would be somewhat eager, or at least amenable to the idea, to prove that they are more than just rich kids with well-connected parents. One would think they could at least play an abbreviated set, or at least the one additional song that people who could’ve been at other venues watching other shows had asked to see. But I guess that if one thought that, she’d be wrong. So that comprises my single complaint about a really fun week filled with some great performances.

Second, I cannot deal with reply-all email abuse. I try to limit gratuitous swearing in the event that God-fearing, decent folk like my parents even want to read this blog, but seriously – for fuck’s sake – two syllable emails that go out to more than two people (not to mention 17) should be censored. Friends don’t let friends needlessly litter our inboxes with the likes of “Keep me posted!” and “Me too!” Please, do your part – only you can stop forest fires and this kind of bullshit.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Catch & Release.

There's a clear frontrunner in Dating Derby 2006. Exciting! Delightful! Downright dreamy. So much for the sappy stuff, the current business is dealing with the honorable mention.

There's nothing wrong with the other guy, he just doesn't make me mix cds, want to hang out on Sunday nights and listen to KCRW while drinking various alcoholic beverages, or surprise me with unbelievably soft vintage band t-shirts. Also, absolutely no time has been wasted pondering the delectability of said honorable mention.

Thus, it's time to feign maturity and do the right thing.

I'm inclined to email him before I leave for SXSW tomorrow (we just email, no phone communication) and relate that although I've really enjoyed hanging out with him, I've decided to see someone else exclusively. No hard feelings. Best of luck. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Other options submitted to the panel include:

(a) telling him that I've reunited with an ex, bad timing, etc.

(b) not mentioning the other guy and only relate not having chemistry, not wanting to pursue this further, etc.

Obviously, it's not like this guy will be heartbroken either way, but I don't want to be embarrassed if I run into him at Whole Foods and, given the choice, I'd like to hurt his feelings as little as possible.

Suggestions from the floor?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Perspective.

Today I dug out an old journal in search of some details pertinent to a cover letter for an internship I'm trying to get for the summer.

Circa May 2001 I wrote something like, "This week I'm the girl everyone wants to be - I only have four final exams!"

Seriously?

See, you might have thought cynicism was tiresome, but unwarranted perkiness is worse.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Clarity

Thursday before last I was having an ambiguously bad day. It'd been about 4 days on < 6 hours of sleep, I had a not-so-hot meeting with my advisor in which I jogged her memory about my heretofore mostly undeveloped statistical prowess, and I sat on various LA roadways for about 2 hours picking up a prospective graduate student from the airport that's 8 miles from my house.

Instead of happy hour, I went for a run to feel better.

Then I fell on the running path.

I wanted to cry. I did, a little. But then I picked myself up, ran on, called my mom and proceeded with the documentation.

So at least I knew that it was, in fact, a shitty day.

Here are my sexy, sexy knees a week later:




So much for the old trick of not shaving your legs before a first date if you want to be sure and keep your pants on. Sporting these scabby, pussy, and bruisy beauts has certainly squelched any temptations to move past 1st base on my recent dating spree - which, I might add continues this Tuesday AND Thursday(!).

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Karma: Bites LA woman in the ass.

I am not a good person. A couple of weeks ago I was out at what I like to think of as the best kept secret on the Westside. It's like a dive bar for rich people: only 'regulars' go during the week for $3 beer on karaoke night (the words come up on one of the plasma screens around the lounge area), but a glass of wine costs $14 and there are always Bentleys parked outside. So anyway, I like this place.

The weekend before last I was there with some friends when this guy started talking to my friends and me. We talked to them for a while but this guy sort of got on my nerves because he said something about not affiliating with either political party when I mentioned Dick Cheney owning stock in Tamiflu and he also thought that Supersize Me came out in 2005, when it was really 2004*. This guy bought drinks for his friends and my friends a couple of times but I never took one because I wasn't in an especially good mood and didn't feel like I had $6 worth of flirtaciousness and feigned interest in me. Instead I wandered around the bar - going to the bathroom when I didn't have to, looked for an ATM that I know didn't exist, pretended to close a tab that isn't open, and retrieved my friends' jackets. Finally we left and moved on to this upscale restaurant that was serving everything on its menu for free from 12a - 6a to promote its new open all night scheme.

The guy from the bar emailed me the next day after he looked me up on the UCLA directory and asked me to coffee or dinner. Seeing the perfect opportunity to recoup the $10 I spent on a Gimlet, I accepted for dinner for last night. Dinner was actually both surprisingly tasty and surprisingly enjoyable. I was feeling quite smug on more than making up for my overpriced cocktail and having such a delicious, delicious dinner. I was feeling quite smug, that is, until I got in my car and realized that unlike the rest of Santa Monica, the meters on Main Street are 24-hours and failing to note this cost me $35. I mean, dinner was really, really nice, so I'm pretty sure I still came out ahead, but this means I'll have to go on another date to really make up for it, which might be tricky because I usually pay for the second date if I initiate it or I have a really good time. I am a bad person.



Last night's date was with this clean cut business entrepreneurial type guy. Tonight I'm going out with another business entrepreneurial type guy, but this one has a faux hawk, a tattoo on his forearm, and owns a company that sends kids to rock and roll summer camp.

Please read again tomorrow to find out about my own brush with death**.


*one of my advisers tells me these aren't especially valid reasons for disliking someone
**moreover brush with rocks and gravel.