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weenie roast

So an oily fellow with a pencil-thin mustache came into Boheme the other day.

Remember the scene in “Singin’ in the Rain” where they demonstrate a “talking picture” to all the partygoers at R.F.’s house and the man on the screen looks into the camera rather haplessly and drones, “This is a picture and I am talking to yooou,” or something like that? Remember that guy? Well, so, this guy at Boheme looked exactly like him. I thought it was him. All raised from the dead and such, I guess.

Anyhoo.

He sidles on up to the counter and sort of croons at me, “So …. what do you have in a dark roast today?”

“Well, I have an Italian Roast.”

“Ohhhhh,” he murmurs, “is that where a bunch of people get together and make fun of Italians?”

He chuckles smugly at himself. Mutters a few words of it again. Seems to be filing it all away for later when he can regale his friends with his “bon mot at the coffeehouse today, hahahahaha!”

And I just stand there and stare at him. At the countertop. I literally do not move a muscle on my face. Because, really, there’s no helping him out of this — this moment he’s created, so I just let it lie … and lie … and lie. I am basically frozen in the face of this rogue wave of self-satisfaction, just waiting for it to pass — as it should. And quickly, too, one hopes.

But he has to fill the space, so he announces — actually ANNOUNCES — after my moment of sensible silence: “I’m a member of Who’s Who in International Poetry.”

Oh.

Okaaay.

Wow.

Uhm.

So.

Where is Carla the Intuitive Clairvoyant when I need her to tell me things??

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well, finally

Today, after 5 whole days, I somehow managed to answer my Gmail security question correctly and was finally given back my stuff!! Like emails people have sent me — especially those “Fw:” ones, I love them so much! — and, oh, the entire email database for Boheme.

But I was actually kinda nervous while waiting for the security question to come up as if I really were some kind of impostor. Just sitting there, I couldn’t remember what the question was — which one did I use? what if I answer it wrong out of my nervous mania? — stuff like that. But then the question popped up and nervous mania whooshed away as I said, “Puh-leaze, how easy,” typed it in, and voila! Email again after only five whole days! (I could have had it instantly if they’d sent me the security question five days ago but) Ain’t technology grand?

(And may I say how ridiculous it is that I thought my own security question — that I wrote myself — should challenge me in some way? Actually be HARD to guess? Because I really did say, out loud, here, by myself, “Puh-leaze, how easy.” Like I was disappointed not to be stumped by myself.)

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“atonement”

Oh, man. Atonement, one of the most haunting books I’ve read in years and yeeears, is being made into a movie. And when you love a book, that’s always a double-edged sword; you’re excited to see it, almost long to see it, and, yet, at the same time, you’re so terrified they’ll destroy the whole thing somehow and that once you’ve seen it, your vision of the book will always be that — that ruined thing forever playing in your head. Which is terrible because you can feel just so utterly proprietary over a beloved book. Two people can pick up the same book and have completely different experiences with it. So your experience of a book really is just that — your experience, your vision. It’s hard to let that go and surrender to someone else’s. You can’t wait but also, you feel you need to throw up a little.

Still, despite my trepidation, I’m allowing myself to digest the fact of this movie, that it’s a done deal, in little bits. So I read a little bit about it. Check out the cast. Try to emotionally prepare for a movie version of a book that I swear I read without ever once breathing. So for anyone else preparing for the movie version of “Atonement,” (sheila, because this was talked about over there), I found some images online from a feature in Empire magazine about the movie.

Keira Knightley as Cecilia Tallis:

keira-cecilia2.jpg

James McAvoy (whoohoo!) as Robbie Turner (with director Joe Wright):

atonement3.jpg

Romola Garai as Briony Tallis (really not sure how I feel about this casting, don’t think she looks right, for one thing):

atonement5.jpg

Vanessa Redgrave as Older Briony:

atonement6.jpg

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shrimp

So Piper. She freaked out the other day when she discovered the shrimp in her older brother’s aquarium wasn’t moving. And it was white, I guess. And kind of puffy. She ran for her mother, screaming, “Mama! Mama! The shrimp is dead! The shrimp is deaaaad!”

My sister rushed up the stairs and found Piper pointing frantically at the tank. “Look, Mama! Look at it!”

S peered into the tank and, sure enough, it looked “pretty much dead,” she told me. But she wanted to calm Piper down, so she started firing off random clueless suggestions: Do you think maybe he’s sleeping? Maybe he’s just tired? What do you think? Do you think he ate too much?

After this barrage of questions, Piper finally just said: “Mama, I’m only in kinnergarten. We don’t talk about shrimp that much.”

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“dear billy joel”

I have been in love with this whole Pop Music Correspondence series for a long time now. The latest, to Billy Joel.

I think you should sing songs. Actual songs. Because you don’t sing any at all right now. You’ve been playing at my club for three months, and though you’re a fine musician and an acceptable vocalist, these things you perform are just not songs in the traditional sense. They’re streams of observations about what the people in the club are doing, punctuated by the occasional “la la la, de de da da” when it’s clear you’ve run out of things to say. It’s just a continuous stream of musical small talk lasting up to five hours.

Also ….

I guess I do owe you some thanks, however, for singing about the drink called Loneliness. That’s a terrible name for a drink. I’m renaming it Banana Mambo. More festive.

Hahahahaha. Read the whole thing.

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waaaaah!

Well.

I have managed to lock my own self out of my own Gmail account. Now I cannot access it for 5 damn days — all because — well, something happened. I mean, I did something. I know not what. But those nice Gmail people, after I had typed about 743 various username/password combinations — trying to remember every obscure, stupid thing that I might have used to protect myself and my account — finally said, “Okay, loser. You are obviously some pathetic ex-girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse of the real owner of this account who’s trying to hack into it to read the aforementioned REAL owner’s email. Therefore, you are now locked out of this account for 5 whole days. At the end of the 5 days, you can try to answer your security question (good luck, Slappy, ’cause it’s obviously not the real YOU), and if you answer correctly (which again, you won’t) you will be given the chance to change the password that you don’t currently remember. Sure, we could ask you the security question NOW and give you the chance to prove who you are — again, right now, for instance — but we prefer to punish your stupidity or early onset senility with a 5-day lockout. We will be happy to help you in any way possible …. after 5 days …. if you even remember you have a Gmail account by then …. which, uhm, you won’t …. probably. But that’s just the sense we’re getting from you. But it’s not personal or anything.”

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hoe-nee

So I was flipping through the channels last night and paused, briefly, on “Last Comic Standing.” I watched it a bit last year, but then got bored when they all started living spastically together in that cra-zaaaayzy house.

The guy I saw 10 seconds of last night basically said this:

Remember when you were in grade school and there was always that kid who was, like, 7 years behind the reading curve? And then he’d have to read out loud? The sentence would be something like “The bear licked the honey” and the kid would go like this:

The beee-aarrrrr? lyyyye-kud? the hoe-nee?

The beee-aarrrrr? lyyyye-kud? the hoe-nee?

The beee-aarrrrr lyyyye-kud the hoe-nee!!

And I really don’t know what else he said, frankly, because I became totally fixated on that. That one phrase. I mean, I fell asleep last night just repeating that to myself: “The beee-arrrr lyyyy-kud the hoe-nee, the beee-arrrr lyyyy-kud the hoe-nee.”

(Everything’s fine, I swear.)