Month: January 2008

Well, I’m taking a break from blogging for a week or so. I’m going through a really rough time — and no, I’m not physically ill or anything and no, MB and I are not breaking up. Never! on that idea. Honestly, I’m just messed up right now — in my head, my heart — have been for a few months now, and I keep trying to write anything here — anything, any stupid ol’ piece of complete and utter CRAP — to cover up the truth. At some point, I may try to explain, but I’ve started many times and it all sounds so self-serving and self-pitying. I’m not capable of thinking straight enough right now to even put an explanation together. It shames me to say so, but there it is.

I’ll see you in a bit, okay?

Heath Ledger, on Saturday, January 19, 2008, in full Pagliacci regalia on the set of Terry Gilliam’s film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

I just think something else happened here. They’re saying he had pneumonia. I just don’t think he killed himself. Can’t explain why, really. Can’t explain any of it at all.

Oh, Lord. My hometown.

Uhm, first, may I say I hate the new “in-depth profiles” on just random auditioners? I just don’t want to know them that well so early in the competition. No. I want to fingerpoint and laugh and laugh. At this point, I really don’t want to hear how gammy has the ‘heimer’s.

All right. I’m only gonna comment on people I find noteworthy — good or bad.

Or if I know someone. Yikes.

So …………

………… okey-dokey.

Thanks, San Diego!

R.I.P.

Heath Ledger

I don’t mean to be going on and on about this, but it’s The Big News in thesehere parts. So for anyone who’s remotely interested. Philip Rivers, Chargers’ QB, will have knee surgery this week. Recovery is expected to take 4 to 6 months. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, he had “secret arthroscopic surgery Monday (ed. last Monday) to clean loose cartilage from his right knee and played all of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game with essentially no anterior cruciate ligament in the knee.”

Wow. That explains a few things, I think. Poor guy. Get better, Philip Rivers!

The Chargers’ whole game really was feisty.

Full details here.

An interview of my niece Piper conducted by my sister (her mother) a few years ago when Piper was 3.

“Pipey, is mommy funny?”

“Nooo.”

“Is daddy funny?”

“Nooo.”

“Is Brother #1 funny?”

“Nooo.”

“Is Brother #2 funny?”

“Yeeah.”

“Is Pop-Pop funny?”

“Yeeah.”

“Is Nana funny?”

“Nooo.”

“Is Uncle S funny?”

“Nooo.”

“Is Aunt A funny?”

“Nooo.”

“Is Uncle Beloved funny?”

“Yeeah.”

“Is Tee Tee funny?

“Yeeah.”

Three-year-old Piper, just calling ’em as she sees ’em.

When the Patriots’ owner was awarded the Lamar Hunt trophy for winning the AFC Championship, he gave heartfelt kudos to the Chargers — and the crowd in Foxborough booed. Loudly.

Seems to me that a crowd that just witnessed its team go to 18-0 on the season and win its 4th Super Bowl bid in less than 10 years could have spared a little grace and shown a little class in victory. Really disappointing.

But, that aside, it was a feisty effort by the Chargers and I’m still a fan.

Next year, Chargers! Thanks for such a passionate, exciting season!

“….. by the San Diego Chargers,” said the dude in the booth. Alas, sometimes the underdogs do lose:

San Diego 12
New England 21

It wasn’t a blow-out. We had lots of injuries on our side, but we gave ’em a bit of a run for their money until the very end there.

Ah, too bad.

I can be happy, though, for native son Junior Seau, former San Diego linebacker, team leader, and all-round great guy, who plays for the Patriots now. He played in San Diego’s one Superbowl shot 13 years ago, came up empty then, and now he has a shot at finally getting that ring. The guy is 39 years old. No one deserves it more.

Still … I’m bummed.

Because who would you rather have do your pre-game show? A bunch of goombahs who actually played football? Boomer Esiason with his defensiveness about his poor tie choices? Howie Long with his square jaw and square hair? Shannon Sharpe with his feeble grasp of basic English pronunciation? Terry Bradshaw with his complete insanity?

Or me, a chick who can explain some — but not all — of the rules of football, knows a lot of the league’s quarterbacks, but not all the members of her own team, shrieks loudly in her living room during games even if she’s by herself, but doesn’t get defensive about her poor tie choices, doesn’t have a square jaw and square hair, has a good grasp of basic English pronunciation and isn’t completely insane, merely possessed of a generalized mania?

I mean, which would you rather have?

I thought so.

All righty. So let’s be realistic, to start:

~ The Chargers are not expected to win. We’re like 14-point underdogs.

~ Tom Brady is some kind of freaky heartless robot.

~ Randy Moss is despicable and plays mean.

~ Then there’s Belicheat.

~ The whole Patriots team seems untouchable. There’s that godlike aura around them, blahdie blah.

~ Also, it’s like 100 degrees below zero in Boston right now. There’s actually concern that the cameras won’t work. It’s 70 degrees here now — where our players practiced this week. So — what? Only a 170-degree difference in temperature? No big whup.

On the Chargers’ side, there are some worrisome — to put it mildly — injuries:

~ Our QB, Philip Rivers, is injured. At this posting, he’s questionable for tomorrow’s game. Which is freaking me out.

~ The league’s best running back — and this is not opinion; he just is — LaDainian Tomlinson is injured, too. Last I heard, he WILL be playing. And don’t forget; he’s the guy who did this a few weeks ago against the Titans — literally jumping over nearly the entire Titans’ line to score from one yard out.

~ Our giant tight end, 6 foot 4 Antonio Gates (aka Tracey’s Cocoa Bear Crush) has a dislocated big toe. The Toe Captain! Ouchy. I once broke one of the lesser toes while creekwalking on a backpacking trip and was completely useless and hobbled and my dad had to basically carry me back out the 9 miles to civilization. Sorry, Dad. I cannot fathom an injury to the Toe Captain. That is catastrophic. The horror. The horror. Feel better, Cocoa Bear!

Okay. So that’s bad. But let’s not forget this:

~ We were 8-point underdogs against the Colts. We won by 4 points. Also, we beat them earlier in the season, breaking their undefeated streak. Are we poised to do it again??

~ If the Chargers were only Rivers and LT and Gates, we certainly would have lost last week. They were all out for LARGE chunks of that game. Remember we have Cromartie and Sproles and Chambers and Jackson and Turner and more. So many other players have stepped out of the shadows this season and proven themselves time and time again. We’re a deep team, even though a few get most of the attention. This is the same team that went 14-2 last year, only better, actually. Just as a team operation, we’re better. Rivers, if he’s able to play, is a smoother, more confident QB. He plays with passion and poise. That’s key. He’s more poised this year, less squirrelly. The team overall seems to keep its head when things get intense, as is inevitable against the Patriots tomorrow. Again, if that weren’t true, we would have lost last week.

~ We want this. BAD. Where the Patriots could easily slip into expectation mode — we’re undefeated, obviously we’ll win, everyone thinks so –the Chargers harbor no such illusions. Listening to player interviews this week, I’ve heard a chorus of resolve to fight — really fight — against the monolithic Patriots. It kinda gets me choked up. Stop it. Stupid game.

~ We haven’t been to the Super Bowl since 1995. And that was the one and only time so far. We lost, badly, to San Francisco. Oh, how well I remember the heartbreak of that game! Our overwhelming defeat …. and then the thousands of loyal Chargers fans who still filled the stadium to cheer their returning beaten team. It was sad; it was heartwarming. Both. But we’re hungry for it again. Patriots win the Super Bowl like every other year. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a different team win for a change? 😉

~ Lastly, who doesn’t love an underdog? Think of all the underdogs facing impossible odds:

America in The Revolutionary War

Spartacus in Spartacus and real life

The US Olympic Hockey Team in 1980 against Russia

Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

David against Goliath in, you know, the Bible

Norma Rae in Norma Rae

William Wallace in Braveheart, also real life

Rocky Balboa in Rocky

That Indiana high school basketball team in Hoosiers and …. real life

The 2004 Boston Red Sox against the New York Yankees for the ALCS

These are off the top of my head. Some of them are actually real. And just because I only know of their real-ness because of movies doesn’t make them any less real.

So really, who doesn’t love an underdog?

Please feel free to buoy my hopes for my underdog Chargers by listing any triumphant underdogs you can think of. Thankee.

GO, CHARGERS!!! SERIOUSLY. GO!!!!

(AFC Championship game 12:00 noon PST tomorrow on CBS. Tune in and watch! Sorry if you hear me shrieking.)

‘Member the paper doll I made for an East Coast friend a few years back? The doll that created a firestorm of controversy because some random commenter thought I’d made an evil devil-worshipping poppet doll? And then I got all mad at him and wrote a whole raving post about it??

Good times. Good times.

Well, not long after that, still being possessed by the devil, I made a doll for Piper’s 5th birthday using the same pattern — only her face on the doll, of course, not mine. Then I made like 5 different outfits for the Piper Paper Doll. Completely nutso of me, I know. She opened them and gasped and — I remember this — blushed this sweet pink blush. Her mom has them stored in a special box and while I knew she might be too young for them when I gave them to her, apparently, now she’s really into them, wants to know how to make more clothes for them, and has told my sister she, uhm, “wants to be a designer, like Tee Tee.” Hahahahahahaha. As I sit here in my ratty jeans. Yes, I am so Vera Wang.

Well, my BIL took a bunch of photos of them back then, sent them to me, and the files were just too huge to load on the blog. Plus, I didn’t have a cellphone then so there was no way to take crappy cellphone photos of them. But now, I have “the best news ever!” as Piper would say. When we went trick-or-treating with her this year, she got them out and I took some super-crappy cellphone photos! At night! In her dimly lit bedroom! YEE-HAW!

So here we go. I will explain as we go. Because, yes, some explanations are in order. The first one being that for several of the shots, the Piper Paper Doll was posed in a bucket of Piper’s Halloween candy.

This one is your basic blue medieval sunflower princess. Note the cone cap with the frizzles dangling from the top. I guess you can’t see those too well. Trust me. There are requisite medieval frizzles dangling there on the right side of her head. The top is just a random bit of paper I had. The skirt is tissue paper covered with this silver metallic tulle. There are sequins here and there because if you’re making a doll for a little girl, there had better be sequins. Oh, and dolly has no shoes. None of the dolls has shoes. Uhm, because I got tired and her birthday was coming up fast. So they are all just wild elfin creatures running barefoot through the forest. Little bohemian wood nymphs. Or some such.

Your basic pink petal princess and/or fairy. Hat and skirt made from fake flower petals. Top, textured paper trimmed in gold ribbon. Oh, and rather than make it easy on myself and make them all one-piece outfits, I made separate tops and bottoms. I guess so she could mix and match. Or because the devil possessing made it impossible to stop. Oh, and also? This is where we enter into the weirdest area. It’s kind of embarrassing. Okay. This is SO OCD. I don’t like little tabs on paper dolls. I have vast and lonely experience with paper dolls from childhood and those damn tabs were always the first thing to go. Every time. They were always the flimsiest part of every paper doll, as if they were made of toilet paper. They’d rip. They’d get soggy when you dropped them in your cereal. They’d just generally decompose. They suck and I hate them. And I remembered being 7 years old and hating them. So ….. the doll is actually two dolls glued together …. with a flat metal rod between them. Then I made all tops, bottoms, and with flat magnets on the back and so they just stick to Paper Piper’s body. The freakin’ doll is magnetized!! Like, wha?? It seemed entirely rational — maybe even ingenious — at the time, but looking back, it is totally insane. It took me forever. Plus, the “flat metal rod” I just mentioned? Let’s be honest. I tore it off the Saran Wrap box in my kitchen, promptly forgot that I had even done that, and then got all pissed off at the Saran Wrap when I couldn’t tear it off anymore.

All just an outgrowth of my deep-seated paper tab hatred and generalized mania.

Your basic pink-and-purple jazzy princess. With a tissue paper and fake flower skirt. And a flapper headband. (That pink pearly thing behind her to the left is not part of the doll.) Oh, and allow me to further mention that this is a black-and-white copy of a picture of Piper that I …. uh, hand-colored. Her hair, her cheeks, her lips, etc. Yup. OC DeeDee.

Sweet Lord, this photo is awful. I apologize for any permanent damage to your retinas. Your basic golden princess minus her crown — we forgot that, but it’s imperative that you know that she has a golden crown, pippa. This skirt is actually my favorite, I think, and Piper thinks it looks like a wedding dress. A layer of white tissue paper, topped with this amazing lace ribbon, and trimmed with a scrap of woven gold ribbon.

So, okay. Piper as Peppermint Patty. I dunno. I thought she should have a casual alternative. You know, in case dolly’s going to a luau. Or a wienie roast. Or moving to Boca.

I’m a nutjob.