February 25 '06

I went to the Target Minute Clinic yesterday to get my throat swabbed, and it was pretty crowded, like an hour wait. But you grab a pager and go try on bathing suits and stuff, which is great, I love the minute clinic, but I think unless I'm sick I'll be avoiding the Southdale Target in the future since it's basically crawling with sick people . Everyone shopping there is really just waiting for their minute clinic pagers to go off too, and I don't want my 409 to come with a side of Herpes. The kids are getting better but I still feel like Arsela Andress.

February 23, '06

Watchin' Idol...first night of elimination by vote...have to say, the right two people are going home, John Candy-by-way-of-an-Italian-lounge- singer guy and the pretty girl who couldn't sing her way out of a wet paper bag but as Mike says, "The amount of money Playboy will be offering her and her sister will set records." Mike will miss her terribly. Two more still to go home...who will it be, who will it be...love that cute little nebishy looking Josh Groban wannabe kid, but he sings straight through his nose. He sounds like Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God.

Boomerangrangrang...

I'm more into the fellas this time out, though I dig Nanny McPhee and cutie pie Paris. Taylor's my man, such a weirdly joyful bundle of grey-haired soul...love Elliot, the dude with the neck beard, looks kind of amish but also kinda Deliverance, kinda like he should have a mouth harp in one hand and a bottle o' moonshine in the other, sings his dualing banjo-lookin' beehind off.

Ooo...squeaky tall girl goin' home, I concur, she was awful...aaaaaaand long necked Kenny Loggins guy. Too bad, I liked him. He was good in the past, unremarkable last night. He's a musician, a whole different ball of wax.

Luuuuurve Chris...he's gritty.

Time for the Olympics. We've all got strep throat, by the way, thanks for asking. Feel like poo.

I already feel my Olympic withdrawal starting. What am I supposed to do with myself after Sunday? Oh, I'm just supposed to watch normal tv then, is that it?

She slammed her drink down a little too hard and shook her hair out of her tear-streaked face.

"Well you can just kiss my ass, Olympics...I never even loved you anyway!"

She awkwardly pulled the ring off her finger (I say awkward because the polish sausage she ate for dinner had caused her hands to swell and she really had to yank that sucker off, even had to add a little softsoap to it and it wasn't quite as dramatic as she had hoped it would be) and threw at the Olympics' fat, smug face.

"Fine, then, fine...two can play this game, you know?"

It came out "Tschookin playthisgame, no?" And no one could blame the sausage for that.

"I'm just gonna go watch The Bachelor and I won't hardly even remember what it was like to have you on 25 hours a day oh, God... *sob* why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me? To us? Did it mean nothing to you? Don't think you can just waltz back into my life a few years from now like everything's fine because it won't be fine, Dick Button will probably be dead by then and I'll be just fine watching the 98th episode of Skating with Celebrities and you'll be sorry. You'll be sorry! I hate you!"

The Winter Olympics turned and gave her one last look before he walked out of her life until 2010.

"I'm sorry you feel that way. But Apolo Ohno might've figured out how to not wipe out or come in third by then."

"Omigod I love you...I'm sorry...come back..."

February 19, '06

She was never so happy as when she was vacuuming. There was something so satisfying in being able to quickly transform what was dirty into something not that dirty anymore, and with such little effort...certain people thought her attachment to her machine a little too deep; truth be told, the psychiatric world would probably consider her a bit of a layup.

"Clearly, she's substituitng sucking up imaginary dirt for cleaning up what's going on between her ears," they might say, and she'd snort in derision and retort that her 8-pound Oreck had more sense in it's Hepa filter bag than the entire APA on a good day, then segue into some lame joke about sacks of hot air and how one will get your whole house clean in ten minutes and one will charge you 150 bucks an hour. Then she'd eat an entire bag of Oreos and cry herself to sleep.

What's up ya'll? Miguel's 40th yesterday, I badgered him for weeks about what he wanted to do and the answer was always the same: hang out at home. So when the big day dawned, that's exactly what we did. The kids and I managed to sneak out and do some clandestine shopping; got him some sweet gifts and a special cake he'd been hinting about, not a baked cake but a mix he saw at William Sonoma for a devil's food number.

Now, I'm no slouch in the kitchen, I'm not great by any means but I know what I'm doing for the most part, particularly when it comes to dessert. I don't do pretty desserts, but I can do tasty. So I was a little skeptical about a cake mix that costs 15 dollars. Fer cryin'...how could a box of any kind of mix be that much better than Duncan Hines? But I bought it and made it and almost burned the house down.

It poofed up and spilled over and half of it ended up on the bottom of the oven, filling the house with so much acrid smoke I had to open all the windows and let some of that minus 2 degree air inside. Mike came home from the store and Molly chirped through the haze, "Mommy's baking a cake!" Happy Birthday, babe.

Once it was all frosted, it looked like some sort of melted top hat. But guess what...it tasted phenomenal; best cake I think I've ever eaten. So short story long, the Devil's Food Mix at Williams Sonoma is worth every penny.

In addition to the little gifty's , I ordered two Ricky Gervais stand-up DVD's for Mike off Amazon UK, thinking I was so clever and loving, since RG is Mike's absolute idol.

"Well, no, I mean I ordered them from the UK," I imagined saying all fancy-like, and whomever I was talking to would be impressed.

"She orders things from different countries, she must be very cultured. She calls England the UK. I think I'll call it that too."

Well color me chagrined, the dern things don't play on the DVD machinery here in the good ol' US of A. God knows why, since I thought all this stuff was made in Japan anyway, but it dudn't. Figgered out we could watch 'em on the computer, however, so the day was saved...it doesn't make me any less of a jerk, but there you go. And they were hysterical.

February 14, '06

Who has it worse, Harry Whittington or Sean Preston Spears-Federline (assuming, of course, that he is Federline's and would any of us be really surprised if he weren't?)

"Well I've obviously got it worse, the doctors tell me I'll live out the rest of my days with a face full of bird-shot. Not to mention after a long and distinguished law career, I will now be the butt of late-night television jokes until the day Cheney finishes me off."

"Please. You lived 78 years before you found yourself on the business end of the veep's bad aim, I'm 4 months old and I've already had to listen to "Ya'll Ain't Ready" 3000 times. Everyone's up in arms because I was in the front seat?? I got news for you, I'm just glad I didn't have to actually drive the damn car this time. Boo hoo, Cheney took a wild shot at some Quail. Wake me up when your mom's breakfast is a shot of Wild Turkey."

Those are real and actual quotes, by the way. They are.

February 13, '06

Hi ya'll.

In the wake of Oprah breaking her diet and dining heartily on a Frey a couple of weeks back on her show, two more prominent memoirists have been exposed as liars. 

25-year-old male prostitute-cum-writer JT LeRoy is really a 40- year-old woman named Laura Albert.  Award winning Native American writer Nasdijj is apparently really a white guy named Timothy Patrick Barrus.

This news got me thinking; who else has been pulling the wool over our eyes? I mean, for years I’ve suspected certain writers of playing fast and loose with the truth.

Take Laura Ingalls Wilder, for instance.

First of all, there’s the obviously fake name. Are we really supposed to believe someone was named Laura? Please. She supposedly lived in a one-room cabin in the woods with her Pa, her Ma, and various and sundry sisters, and they all worked their fingers to the bone 24/7 just to stay alive.

This story is so full of holes I could use it to drain spaghetti.  Hasn’t anyone ever questioned how Pa and Ma found the time or the privacy to make all those kids? I’d like Ms. Ingalls Wilder to explain that one, but she can’t, she’s “dead”. 

Well, how convenient. Hey, who wouldn’t love to get rich off a pack of lies and then die, escaping Oprah’s wrath scot-free?

Not so fast. With her new 55 million dollar radio deal with XFM, I think Oprah will actually now be so powerful she could summon the dead and put ‘em on the hot seat if she felt like it. (You can run but you can’t hide, half-pint.)

As long as I’m dreaming of Ms. Winfrey playing Ghost Whisperer, I’d like her to get to the bottom of a couple of long-held conspiracy theories with the counter-culture set; those concerning William Shakespeare and Leonardo DaVinci.

I’d want her to ask the former if he really did write all those plays himself or if it was someone else, or even several different people working under the same nom de plume.

As for the latter, I don’t care about the whole Mary Magdalene controversy. What I’d like to hear Oprah ask the spirit of Leonardo Da Vinci is this:

“Mr. Da Vinci, is the Mona Lisa really just a painting of you in drag? If I hold up a self-portrait of you next to the Mona Lisa, it’s fairly obvious they’re near mirror images of each other. Is that what the mysterious smile is really about, that your junk is all tucked back and you just feel pretty?”

I digress. Back to the writers.

What about that Harry Potter kid? He’s just pathological.  I can’t believe how easily he’s gotten the whole world to fall for his Ministry of Magic mumbo-jumbo, and now his wildly unbelievable stories are being made into movies. He doesn’t need another book deal; he needs a spanking and maybe some Ritalin.

This next one I have to say, I’m pretty surprised the Drudge Report hasn’t caught yet, but I’m also really excited because I think I’m about to scoop everyone…you ready?

The book Memoirs of a Geisha is written by a guy. Why has no one noticed this? His name is right there on the cover, “Arthur Golden”. It’s like he’s begging to get caught.

What would Oprah have to say about this?

February 9 '06

Yeah, the Grammy's were on last night and I watched some of it, but it's my second least favorite awards show. (My least favorite is a tie between the Espy's, which are beyond stupid, and the People's Choice Awards mostly because I'm tired of Sandra Bullock winning in every category every year. But I guess that makes the Grammy's my third least favorite. Ok, you got me.)

My biggest beef with the Grammy's is the fact that apparently everything is eligible for like, five years. Case in point, last night Green Day won best record for Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a song from an album that came out two years ago.

Secondly, the musical numbers are always treated like the event of a lifetime, and they always stink. Last night when Jay-Z and Paul McCartney were on stage together I was so embarrassed for both of them I wanted to cry, and honestly I think Sir Paul felt the same way. When he sang the line " Now I need a place to hide away" I think he really meant it. Although I always enjoy the hilariously fake audience "Oh that was so brilliant, kudos, kudos to you Sir Paul, we are not worthy!" standing 'o' from the likes of Tom Hanks those moments always inspire.

Wouldn't you love it if someone in the front row had the nerve to just say, "I didn't think it was that great, actually, in fact I found it really awkward, watching this legend croak along with a rapper he's probably never even heard of before tonight. I also thought that whole sing-a-long medley featuring Sly and the Family Stone and everyone who's ever recorded an album, including spoken word and interpretive dance, was a mess."

I suppose that would be pretty Simon Cowellesque, and even though the guy is way too mean sometimes, you have to admit he's almost always right.

Speaking of American Idol, my faves so far are the rocker cowboy dude and the gray-haired guy.

February 8 '06

Finny makes his first reconciliation this weekend and he's nervous. Man, I was terrified before mine, I remember it like it was yesterday. Tara Murphy and I had made a pact that we'd spill about stealing candy from Hawkinson's Grocery a year earlier. Yep, stole candy in first grade...and that there's the truth, the real kind, not a bunch o' that fake James Frey kind. You can read about it here.

We have to go up to church tonight so he can practice, and he keeps asking me if he has to say his sins tonight and then again on Saturday. He got this super cute note from the kid who sits at his desk during faith formation classes; the religion classes for the kids in the parish who don't go to the school. Back in the day it was called CCD. No clue what that stood for, I could google it and find out but I don't feel like it. But this note Finny got was really nice, all "Hi it's fun to sit at your desk I hope we get to meet" kind of stuff, which is a far cry from how it went down when I was in Catholic school.

CCD classes were Wednesday nights, and every Thursday morning our desks would be trashed. Our glue would always be emptied out into big dried puddles all over the inside, our pencil boxes would be totally pillaged, "You're so dead" or "You suck" carved into the desk tops...when we all finally did come face to face, it was like the meeting of the Sharks and the Jets.

We had to walk past the public school every day in our uniforms, and oh, the humanity...the verbal abuse that went on, from both sides! I shudder to think what the CCD teacher would've thought if she'd heard us all. This one kid road his bike over my feet and taunted me every single day for a year. Don't get me wrong, everyone's grown up and friendly now, it was all just run of the mill kid stuff and back then no one really worried that anybody was gonna actually get hurt. But I'm guessing whoever's in charge of Faith Formation these days must've had a similar experience, hence the note-writing.

February 7, '06

Interior: A darkened bedroom. A woman, my guess is she's the mother, is tucking a blanket around a sleeping child. She then exits the room and meets a man in the hallway, who might be the child's father but could just be her boyfriend or maybe not even anyone that serious, maybe they haven't gotten to that stage of their relationship yet where they refer to each other that way, maybe he's just some guy she's using for free dinners and sex to get through the heartbreak of her divorce, he's not even really her type but his attention just makes her feel pretty again, wanted again, you know? Maybe she makes fun of him behind his back to her girlfriends later; in fact, they secretely refer to him as Thimble Man over cosmopolitans, actually make that margaritas, cosmos are pretty over since Sex and the City ended, and maybe she's the sort of woman who cares about stuff like that, which if she were really being honest with herself, might have contributed to her divorce. The point is, they don't say; we don't know. It's left to the viewer's imagination and sadly, all too often, this is what I imagine. She says to the fellow as she looks over her shoulder at the sick kid, who sneezes out a gob of goo:

"Poor Bobby; I just wish I could comfort him more."

Voiceover tells her about new Glade Plug-ins for cold and cough; we see her inserting the medicine-soaked orb into Bobby's wall socket, where it will not only release fumes that will relieve his symptoms but presumably provide him with extra blankets, read to him, sing to him, hug him, make him soup and provide any other forms of "traditional" motherly comfort.

Glade Plug-ins cough and cold. So you have more time to watch porn with that guy you're kind of seeing.

February '05, '06

Well, howdy do! Finally showed this dangnargin' computer who's boss is what's new around here...it toyed with me for a good week, acted all passive aggressive with it's whole, "Oh guess what, I don't work anymore oh wait I might...oh wait that's right I don't" emotionally abusive attitude, and I almost took it, too...almost rolled over and gave up, almost resigned myself to being just another world wide web statistic, another notch on the bedpost of the blogosphere, just another piece of internet roadkill...

nananananananana...nananananananana...nananananananana...

My power book G4... A machine barely alive...

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. My laptop will be that man. Better than it was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.”

Well, maybe I didn't turn it into a bionic man, but I got a new operating system and it seems to be working.

So let's see...watchin' the Supersnore right now, flipping between The Josephine Baker Story and Napoleon Dynamite during the ads.

I'm very sore. Took a Body Pump class on Friday. I'm not usually one for the classes at the gym, I'm pretty much a lop and the thought of trying to follow along to a routine set to fast-paced club music intimidates me. But it's February and the apple cart needed some shaking, so it was either take Body Pump or wreck my hair. Why Katie, your hair couldn't possibly get any worse, you may be thinking, and while this is indeed a compelling argument, I took the class.

My knuckles hurt. My eyelids hurt. When I inhale, my chest hurts, when I exhale it's my back. I'm actually typing this with my tongue. I can barely get up and down the stairs and my arms are stuck in a half-bent position. I look like at any minute I'm going to break into the robot.

Saw Factotum at the Walker Friday night, special screening for Lily Taylor week or something. It was shot here two summers ago, and Andy had a small role so we were all super excited to see it. Apparently it got picked up at Sundance last week, too, so it'll be coming out towards year's end in wide(ish) release.

It was alright, had it's moments, it's a dark comedy and it was definitely dark and sometimes funny, in a weirdly twisted way, one of those movies that if "entertaining" isn't exactly the right word, it's strangely watchable, and a lot of local people were involved in it so you gotta love that, especially since the film industry here has been on life support and actually declared clinically dead a few times over the last ten years. There are a coupla raunchy parts, and I was so very, very happy to be sitting with my parents while I watched Matt Dillon and Lily Taylor go at it; that made Body Pump seem like a day at the park. As it went on and we started to worry that Andy's scene got cut, why there he was, storming across the screen, yelling a blue streak at and then punching Mr. Academy Award nominee Mr. Dillon himself before heaving him out of the employment office. Huzzah! Huzzah!

Saw Glory Road this week, too. Finny and I were trying to see King Kong for his birthday but it was sold out.

"Oh! Well, let's see...um, what else you got...hey, Finny how 'bout Glory Road? That looks good,"

The boy shrugs his shoulders in the universal language of crestfallen children and tries to act as if he doesn't feel like crying because he's been so looking forward to seeing King Kong on his birthday. Mom buys the tickets to the lame other movie, the one called "Not King Kong, no cool giant worms that all your friends have already seen and that you told them you were finally gonna get to see today because it took you that long to convince your mom to let you see a pg13 movie anyway". She keeps up her chirpy mom chatter all the way down the hallway and though the previews.

"This looks great, sweetie! Way better than King Kong...it's about basketball, hon, you love basketball! I bet this is so good, I bet we love it!"

Funny fish-out-of-water-moments! Serious civil rights undertones! Lots of exciting basketball and a guaranteed happy ending, set to a kick-ass People Get Readycentric soundtrack and the added bonus of dreamy Josh Lucas for mom! A+. When it ended, I was bawling and Finny said to me as we walked out of the theater, "I think that's my favorite movie."

Just hearing him say that made it my favorite movie, too.

Time to limp to the kitchen and chug some Advil.

© Katie McCollow, 2006