what's the world coming to?

you've got to be effing kidding me. jail time for sagging jeans?

narcissus

i had fun with photo booth yesterday. yes, i'm vain. i like pictures of me. i want you to like pictures of me. i want you to like me. sigh.

the album's at http://www.myspace.com/deeluxegal, if you have a myspace account.

meanderings

sunshine is nice. walked to the pearl in it. feel like a person again.

reading is nice too. makes me a calmer person. half way through as simple as snow (loaned to me by zerd -- probably the best read person i personally know). it's weird to read a novel about high schoolers who are texting and emailing each other, since that wasn't a part of my high school experience or in any of the literature that shaped my world view. but it's a good book thus far.

made a lovely salad at whole foods. julienned beets, strawberries and romaine lettuce with a touch of red wine vinegar and oil. rich popping colors and a crispy/sweet/earthy thing going on. mmm for all the senses.

found cute boots that fit my feet for the first time in like five falls. found two pairs even!

i decided that ice cream calories don't count if you eat the ice cream while walking. but i didn't enjoy the ice cream as much. poo.

funniest pick up line i've heard in a while: i'm walking down nw second ave carrying said boots, guy on bicycle goes by, circles back around and says "can i help you carry those...or wash?" then he proceeds with "i'll give you a ride home. i know how to wipe my own ass." if this isn't evolution of the species, what is? it was everything i could do not to spread my legs right then and there.

are you ready for some football?

on saturday we went up to seattle for what was the end of one football season and the start of another. as most of you know, my sweets plays for the portland shockwave, which is part of the iwfl (a national women's tackle football league). the iwfl season ended a couple weeks ago, right about the time nfl pre-season got started.

the seattle majestics invited us up to scrimmage them as part of the pre-game programming at the seahawks/vikings pre-season game. the lady ballers also got to unfurl and wave the 20yd x 15yd flag during the anthem. then we went up to our nosebleed seats to sit behind melissa's bachelorette party and watch the game. (i have to admit, the veil pinned to the "melissa's bachelorette party" trucker hat was cute.) although i had been on the field during halftime at the meadowlands during a week 16 giants vs. cowboys game (to take pictures of a scrimmage when darleen played for the ny sharks), saturday was my first "nfl game" from up in the stands. i expected the players to look smaller than they did from the nosebleeds, but i was pleasantly surprised.

i'm looking forward to this fall. hoping to enjoy LT and the duo of reggie bush/deuce mcallister as much as i did last season. we'll see if brady quinn and jurevicius and a couple other key trades/drafts can help the browns get anything started this year (although one naturally doesn't expect real results for a couple seasons). but funniest nfl news thus far? some guy on ebay is selling michael vick cards that have been chewed by a dog!

plant love

plants: in my garden
this grey weather has me feeling like summer is already over. i never did get around to expanding my garden. the unusually ickles weather has been a mixed blessing -- i didn't need to water everyday and therefore didn't develop the usual depth of relationship with my garden; but being away from home so much this summer was easier knowing that one day without water wasn't going to kill my geraniums.

plants: organizational system
as i search for motivation to get my act together with fall auditions, i keep running into carl linnaeus. (okay, not actually running into him, but coming across references to him.) developing binomial nomenclature for my to-do list might not speed things up, but it would be a fun procrastination method.

plants: reasons to buy stuff
eco-consumerism inspires people in some, um, interesting ways. take cargo's plantlove lipstick -- the packaging is made from corn instead of petroleum and part of the packaging can be planted in your yard and will sprout wildflowers. lindsay lohan even designed one of the colors. i want the job of the person who got paid to come up with this stuff.

max roach (1924-2007)

grandpa nick's gonna enjoy having max roach on the other side with him. they'll light up a joint and talk philosophy through the music.

darcelle's

here is the one joke worth keeping from the show at darcelle's on saturday night:

a really tragic event happened the other day in washington d.c.
george w. bush's library caught on fire.

(pause)

bush is really sad because it destroyed both of his books.

(pause)

and he hadn't finished coloring them yet.

real and imagined

the disparity between fantasy and reality is lately shocking me. i try to uncover the moment of fissure whenceforth my mind continued on the course of things expected while reality turned and took a different path. alas, said moment alludes me.

little river flows

eyes closed in joy do not see

rocks changing her path

and there you have it...there's the reason i'm not "a writer." you should see the equally lame poetry from the teen years.

speaking of which, check out the show mortified the next time it plays in your city. maybe even pull out your old journals and audition.

(btw, like the little rock art we found at babgy by some andy goldsworthy imitator?)

cascade locks

yesterday mon cher ami smuggled me aboard a jet boat tour up to cascade locks. (alas, no disguises or bondage were required. that fantasy about a hood over my head and waking up in the trunk of a car will have to wait.)

our tour narrator extraordinaire imbibed us with all kinds of neat knowledge. my nerd self was soaking it up. some of my favorite factoids:

during the month of august, the columbia flows backwards. due to the moon's closeness to the earth and the ocean's influence on the river, the columbia right now is flowing about 2 mph away from the pacific instead of its usual 8 mph out to sea.

the original burnside bridge was moved and is now the sellwood bridge (which is apparently a very unsafe bridge -- stay away from it). what is now the burnside bridge was built a couple years thereafter.

the city's building a new bridge to sauvie island. the one that is currently there is going to be moved and set up around flanders st or something like that.

the center span of the fremont bridge was lifted and put into place in about an hour. it was a record breaking dead-lift. 26 barges held the piece before it was lifted into place!

(i didn't realize i like bridges so much, but i must since that's most of what i retained. i also appreciated the beauty of the st. johns bridge...two years here and it was my first time seeing it.)

one of highlights, naturellement, was going through the lock at bonneville dam. when i was in 4th grade, my girl scout troop volunteered for a day at a lock house in maryland. we wore period dresses. (the little house on the prairie replica was not a flattering look for my pre-pubescent body, and the thick itchy fabric was nothing like the gone with the wind attire i had been hoping for. sigh.) we used period brooms to sweep out the original lock-keeper's house as we told visitors about how the lock worked. but the lock was no longer working, and it was small, and we just stared down into it briefly.

we entered the large cement pen which is the bonneville lock. the crew tied the boat to the side of the lock, and the huge doors behind us grinded shut. un peu de claustrophobia set in, but i held it mostly at bay. somehow i expected water to flow in from somewhere visible, but instead it bubbled up from under us -- raising us just over 50 ft in the process. after a light lunch at the cascade locks visitor's center and a short walk through downtown cascade locks (happening place that it is -- what vacant looking people), we returned through the locks. during the descent, wheels somewhere in the lock made creepy ringing siren calls in major thirds, creating the expectation of some creature to come forth when the doors opened. alas, the other side just held river, but it also held enough sunshine to make the choppy ride back mostly enjoyable.

of meat and men

oh, the silliness of it all. more fab reporting from all that's fit to print.

myspace whore

so, not only have i started taking and posting those myspace surveys, i've started writing ones. what a dork.

btw, here it is. i thought it was clever at the time. why do i feel like i need to share this stuff about myself?

Age: 29
Birthplace: bartlesville, ok
Children: soon (i hope!)
Drug: sugar
Emotion: longing
Fear: depression
Goal: international fame (not that i’m aspirational or anything)
Home: wherever i am
Inspiration: generosity of others
Joy: music
Kink: biting
Love: water
Memory: snow up to my waist
Nickname: magoocher (in my wee years)
Occupation: helping people sell more shit
Priority: do right
Quirk: must do certain tasks in multiples of 4 or 5
Revelation: infinite capacity for love
Sense: smell
Temptation: cigarettes
Unacceptable: dishonesty
Vice: gluttony
Wealth: doing something that feeds you soul
Xenophilic or xenophobic?: neither and both
Youth: overrated
Zodiac: taurus with leo rising

road trip with the bro

i was lately blessed with a visit from my younger brother, including an awesome roadtrip around northwestern oregon. we camped (he enjoyed playing firemaker), took in several very different views of the pacific, hiked in search of petroglyphs (found!) and dipped in a couple rivers.

some highlights:

(since i rather not prioritize importance of one experience versus another, i've used sequential order of occurrence as my organizing principle)

• the view from the astoria column
• curry chicken quesadillas at urban cafe
• revolver-bearing firing range warning signs and cold war era light towers at cape disappointment (which i always mistakenly call cape despair or cape desolation...i'm so emo)
• the tsunami warning signs along 101
• sunset at canon beach
• the driftwood cemetery that is the beach in lincoln city
• touring and tasting at the rogue brewery & distillery
• sand drifts at agate beach in newport
• petroglyphs (mostly bears and water) east of sweet home
• the river in cascadia
• the stars in mt hood national forest (so many! so bright!)
• watching zack make fire and take pictures of it (for hours)
• bagby hot springs
• diving into the river/waterfall by babgy (perhaps more awesome than the hot springs)
• ending it all with yumminess from pastini back in portland

what's wrong with people?

someone let their dog piss on my vespa this morning. how is it that you're on your morning walk with frodo, fido or fifi and he lifts his leg to piss on someone's vehicle and you let him? makes me want to lay a little snip-tuck on dog and owner.

mississippi

my heart goes out to anyone in minneapolis affected by the I-35 bridge collapse. the pictures are crazy -- i can't imagine how bizarre it is in person. well actually, i can (i'm sure it's no more for the mind to take in than ground zero was), but it's still a lot to wrap one's head around.

rufus

the sweets and i saw rufus wainwright at the crystal ballroom last night. 'twas lovely to see someone so adored for marching to his own drummer. (actually, marching to his own full orchestra, i suspect.) it's also refreshing to hear live music that's in tune!

(as you can see from the patterns adorning some of his flaming-er fans, his fans also march to their own drummers.)

one member of his band deserves a particular shout out. decked in thick rainbow suspenders, he played tenor sax, soprano sax, flute, recorder, piano and sang some lovely countertenor backup vox. hello, mr. most talented.

one of the highlights of the evening was an irish folk song that rufus and band performed sans amplification. maybe it was just me, but the crowd went crazy for this -- perhaps more so than for the old favs they came to hear him sing. pardon my new-agey moment, but there's magic in the unadulterated transmission of sound waves from human vessel to human vessel. one of my favorite aspects of the operatic tradition is said physical connection (sound produced by one person's body vibrating another person's body -- at a cellular level even!) conscious of it or not, people respond to this human connection when you give it to them -- last night being exhibit a-439.

the other highlight, of course, was the encore in which rufus lip synced to his cover of "get happy" dressed à la garland. with his band giddily participating as the dancing boys clad in black suits and baby pink shirts, they re-enacted the scene from summer stock -- complètement camp, mais complètement fab!

rufus performing the second act in lederhosen was quite adorable, too.

pass me the lead paint, would ya?

yet another reason to skip giving a barbie to the kids in your life -- lead paint.

yup. in the "made in china" era, lead paint is no longer just an issue relegated to those who live in pre-war buildings and have kids with a penchant for dining on paint chips. no! lead paint is now a concern for anyone with kids who like to put toys in their mouths. not that kids ever do that.