KarenUhOh

Your Blog Makes You A Modern Girl

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:36:36 -0400

Karen has mondo crushes, faithful readers know. I try to remain true to each of them, but life and responsibilities sometimes turn me whichway, till when I stumble on an old flame I’m thrilled to feel the rush still take my breath away.

I’ve known for months Carrie Brownstein had an NPR blog, but a fateful link through The Awl caused me to looky loo for the first time in a spell, and I’m happy I did.

For here is Carrie, Guitar Goddess Emeritus Supreme, fanblogging away, for Dionne Warwick, no less; behaving like a geek (did I ever tell you about that time I got Janet’s autograph?), and then hanging out (at a Native American casino! Who can make this stuff up?), drinking, and losing $20 fast (but not that fast, Carrie…I’ll show you how it’s done).

She’s just like us. Only she’s just like us on NPR.

[Add me to your blogroll, Carrie? Pretty pleassseee??]

Indian Gaming Saves Lives

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:30:41 -0400

Indian Gaming Saves Lives:

So we learn, in this terrifying but ultimately heartwarming story of an elderly lady who passed up the buffet at the casino, only to find herself too weak to get out of the bathtub that same evening.

She kept herself going by drinking from a rubber duck—one of her “boys”—with a hole in it. Her collection of ducks include a fireman and a policeman.

“I kept thinking they would be horribly upset to find me dead in a bathtub,” Madsen recalled.

Hombres, “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)” I was...

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:21:49 -0400

Hombres, “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)”

I was thinking about summer last night, and sitting outside, swatting flies and drinking beer, waiting for something on the grill to burn, and thinking about AM radio and how when you were a kid every song meant so much more with the reverb and echo of the huge-bottomed basslines all the good tunes seemed to have…and then this silly tune started rattling around in my head, and, I realized, even as the Velvets were slinking under NYC about to reinvent the world, there were all these trash bands from the hinterlands doing nothing but riffffffing “Gloria” to death, and I loved them, each and every one, swatted a fly, drank a beer, and waited for something to burn.

Saw a man walkin’ upside down
My T.V.s on the blink
Made Galileo look like a Boy Scout
Sorry ‘bout that, let it all hang out

Into the Mysticatnip

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:30:06 -0400

Into the Mysticatnip:

So, while I was driving by the mortuary coming to work, because of the guy who fouled up the Ike by driving onto the L tracks and getting crushed by the train, this story came on FoxNews (I listen to it for the articles) about a kid whose family believes is reincarnated from a WWII fighter pilot.

They’ve written a book about it, and are touring to promote the book, so you will buy it, and share in the eerie and impossibly detailed similarities between this young man’s fascination with planes and his dream-state recall of the circumstances of the fighter pilot’s life and death.

I’m not about to say this is all a load of crackpot hoo-ha designed to make your money vanish. Even though the facts that these people are from Louisiana, and willingly appear on daytime TV, and also that they never actually show the kid flying a fighter plane like you figure he would be flying, if this dead guy had taken up residence inside him, make me skeptical.

But I have to tell you about Chloe.

Chloe is a cat. We got Chloe after Becky died. Becky was old and very sick, but she did not want to die yet. We took her to the vet, and she knew what was coming. She crawled inside my jacket when the doctor came toward her with the needle. I wept like a baby.

We lasted two weeks before we decided we had to go to the Shelter. How will we know who to choose? asked the SUO. Easy, sez I. There will be a sign.

There was. Chloe looked exactly like Becky. I mean exactly. If we were spreading a bunch of photos in front of you there at your desk, or at the coffee place, or in bed, wherever you’re reading this, I swear you could not tell me who was who.

But there were other, shocking coincidences. Among them were these out-of-this-world behaviors:

1. Both Chloe and Becky never covered their poop in the litter box.

2. Both Chloe and Becky had to run around the kitchen table clockwise before going out the kitchen door. EVEN THOUGH the door was RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.

3. Both Chloe and Becky craved peanut butter, Prego Classic Spaghetti Sauce, and powdered sugar donuts from Dimples. [Dimples is the donut shoppe.]

But, the most bizarre coincidence of all involved our parrot, Sunny. Sunny is very smart. He is, in fact, much smarter than me, and would out-perform the majority of you on most standardized tests. He is brilliant at mathematics, always selects yellow M&Ms, and enjoys baby back ribs. His favorite film is Dirty Harry.

The INSTANT we brought Chloe into her new home, Sunny shouted, “HI BECKY!!!” And he has continued to call her Becky ever since.

Sunny, incidentally, also does not cover his poop.

I am waiting for a call from Fox and Friends, but they are too busy mispronouncing “Sotomayor.”

Headed Over Heeled

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:44:38 -0400

I wanted to print out for you the daily e-mail you can sign up to get from The Awl (dot com), because Choire seems to write these in a contemplative mode that scratches the itch of his ruminative self (you can switch “contemplative” and “ruminative” there and I don’t think it would matter), and he actually hit on a couple points I was pondering talking about this morning, in a contemplative, ruminative way…

There may or may not be a mystical component to this, but what I think about it, I don’t think it would matter.

Here:

Oh, good actual morning, dear reader!

Last night I was walking down Ninth Avenue from Co., the pizza place which inspires great amounts of hatred:

http://nymag.com/urr/urr.pl?rm=all_reviews&listing_id=27490&listing_type=nyml_venue_restaurant

But despite those complaints, I think the pizza dough is maybe the best I’ve ever had. And yes indeed, it does have excellent “hole structure”!

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/11/first-taste-of-jim-laheys-pizzeria-co-company-chelsea-manhattan-nyc.html

Also they played one of the greatest songs in the world, which, when I hear it unexpectedly, can put me in a good mood for days on end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9nqCM8Ito8

1984 was a long time ago. Or: was it?

After dinner we walked down Ninth Avenue and turned east onto 20th. As usual, we were looking into people’s apartments and commenting loudly on their ceiling heights/tacky lamps/paintings/etc.

Immediately on our left, this older fellow was sitting on a stoop, having a cigarette.

“Looking for an apartment?” he asked.

This was so jarring, so out of place from the New York City that I have come to expect. I was reminded of the haphazard and thoughtless ease of real estate transactions in Mary Cantwell’s memoir, “Manhattan, When I Was Young.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/17/books/the-summer-of-53.html

So we followed the big man, who was named Jimmy, upstairs. I was only half-convinced that we would be held captive and tortured; he looked slow, I figured I could take him. He extinguished his cigarette and saved the unsmoked half.

The apartment is a second-floor one-bedroom. It was of course terrible: depressingly ugly, with a shoe-horned kitchen alcove of the worst materials off the one main room, and then a small bedroom twice as tall as it is wide, a shape which always reminds me of a prison cell, and both rooms had the sort of paint job of once-vivid and now-sad and queer lady-colors always left behind by a fun young woman when she vacates an apartment for a better place in Brooklyn with a lover—or when she has gone home to Minnesota in defeat.

The apartment is $2100 a month. It formerly was $2500. The reduction leaves it still quite overpriced. And yet here we are. The clock has been turned back some number of decades! The rent is repealed; the tired old super is atop the stoop, hustling in strangers—at 10:30 at night—from the street to take a lease. When are we exactly? This something old is something new that is going on.

—Choire

They don’t accept replies, so this is how I would have replied, had they:

1) I spent the better part of the late-80’s contending Talk Show was one of the ten greatest albums ever made. I gave it to a succession (two) of lovers to prove it. One was dumb enough to marry me. I don’t think it was because of the record, but, I have an ego.

2) I saw a sign on the way in this morning, at a mortuary, because I had to get off the expwy after some idiot jumped a concrete barrier in his car at 4 a.m. and got snapped in half by a train and people were hurt and as a result traffic was all fucked up and that guy who jumped the barrier better hope I never find out his name because my commute was a fucking BITCH.

And the sign said: “Recession headstone sale!! $450!!”

Anyway, I think these are comments about the irony of changing lives and possibly regressing worlds that may or may not be alluded to allusively in Choire’s post…but mainly I think they’re comments about me, so if you’re still reading this, click on the YouTube link to the “Head Over Heels” video and let’s pretend we’re married.

cvxn: towerofsleep: circumpolarnavigation: Can we bring this...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:34:50 -0400

cvxn:

towerofsleep:

circumpolarnavigation:

Can we bring this back? Please?

(via ouno)

As a certain scrivener once put it: “I’d prefer not to.”

This is the best Internet of today.

It was following this that Starsky and Hutch decided to go with Huggy Bear.

Rev. Jeremiad Wrong

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:30:48 -0400

Rev. Jeremiad Wrong:

Reverend Wright? Shut the hell up. Nobody cares.

Burris Probe Figure Killed

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:20:19 -0400

Burris Probe Figure Killed:

This fellow helped For-Now Sen. Roland Burris get seated—then had an attack of conscience and began to cooperate with the investigation into the ALLEGED Burris-Blagojevich [alleged] “collusion” in Burris’ Senate appointment.

Died Monday at 42, on a rural road I’ve traveled a few times—mid-afternoon, no alcohol. Car vs. tree, as we say in the law biz. Brain tumor, someone told the coroner. Tox screen done, but “no autopsy is planned.”

I also say, hmm. Coincidences are bitches.

Shooting Blanks

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:42:00 -0400

Shooting Blanks:

KANE COUNTY IL. Your tax dollars at work. This is my elected county board, spending my property taxes to debate whether to support the Second Amendment. Sponsored by—no, you’re kidding!—a gun lobby who’ll run down to the State Capitol now and bray, “See, them folks up there to Geneva want their God-given right to discharge a sidearm at will!”

Next time have the guts to vote DOWN a proposal to support the U.S. Constitution, if you really want to get your name in the papers.

n.b. I went to law school with Bonnie Kunkel, who was one of four voting against the measure. Back at Champaign, we all thought Bonnie was a little light in the loafers. Take that back. We didn’t think she had any loafers.

My apologies, Ms. Boardperson.

The crowd seems subdued for the ferocity of the performance, the...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:42:26 -0400

The crowd seems subdued for the ferocity of the performance, the boys look vigorous and freshly-transfused, and that pink guy’s guitar might even have strings.

peterfeld: dailydoseofdylan: One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:45:00 -0400

peterfeld:

dailydoseofdylan:

One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)- Bob Dylan

From the album ’Blonde On Blonde’

This is the ultimate.

Hard to argue the point. No purpose to even trying to list the contenders. This is the one.

I’m not quite sure what the fascination is with this...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:14:03 -0400

I’m not quite sure what the fascination is with this fuckheel, given that his on-air persona is crafted from dialogue that could be written by a truck backing up. But he sure knows how to draw attention to himself. Here Gordon Ramsey apparently calls a veteran Aussie newsreader a pig, and in poor-quality video confesses a long-standing (doubt it) desire to BOOP her.

Posted primarily for the reaction byte from the Deputy Prime Minister (seems more like a Dep. Home UnderSecretary function, but, it’s Australia, so she was probably at the beach…no, wait, it’s Winter there)…and the shot of TV crews running, mics and assorted appendages extended, after a man running.

Exploding Hearts, “I’m A Pretender” I have no...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:53:15 -0400

Exploding Hearts, “I’m A Pretender”

I have no idea what got me to these guys, the better part of a decade late…I have no idea how I missed them in the first place, other than that they fit a Portland punk-power-popper profile w/ the inevitable Groovies/Shoes/Only Ones/Jam reference portfolio that threw them in a sack with 500 other bands.

But they were pretty darn good, and this song is p.d. undeniable. Three of them died, tourbus MVA, July 2003, outside Eugene. The explosive end to a rock and roll heart.

So, I bought one of these for my office. My desk is a good 7-8...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:29:00 -0400

So, I bought one of these for my office. My desk is a good 7-8 feet from the door, and the Boss is in Cruise Control when he wheels by here anyhow. Plus, he usually just barks instructions at me or throws papers in my direction, so I figured this is a good sit-in for me when I have more important stuff going on.

Only now our accountant has come in, and he wants to present the “new hire” with his W4 forms. He also is asking what I’m doing at the new guy’s desk. And then there’s the fruit basket, and those festive and comical balloons. I’m wondering if I’ve overplayed my hand.

But he’s only making $20K more than me, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too pissed.

peterfeld: “Eat it, John Quincy Adams!” Now the boy is going to...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:24:55 -0400

peterfeld:

“Eat it, John Quincy Adams!”

Now the boy is going to have to have a pair of those, too. The socks.

rendit: Suck My Left One / Rebel Girl Live in DC, 1992 I may...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:11:42 -0400

rendit:

Suck My Left One / Rebel Girl

Live in DC, 1992

I may have already exhausted my self-imposed KH quota for the day; but I jus had to send one out to a very special Queen of the Neighborhood.

I kinda needed to hear exactly this right now. So, thanks for reading that part of my brain, even if the book in front of you was someone else’s.

“Rebel Girl” became a rather key part of something I wrote once. Kathleen made a cameo appearance. By phone. Why am I telling you this? Gulp. What a few days it’s been.

But, anyhow, thanks.

Cleaning Windows

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:35:23 -0400

Pardons in advance. This probably won’t tickle many ribs. But there are lessons, and hopefully light, in here somewhere.

First: point of order: Karen’s home computer died Thursday; in mid-coitus, it seems. Just as I was preparing another recipe of overripe riposte for you, a thief came in the night and totally trashed my Windows apps (shut up, Mac users; not today, okay?).

I have no e-mail, no Net, no nothing that tethers me to you. I spent the better part of yesterday on the phone with patient people who indulged my swearing and threats and we began what appears to be a tedious process of re-inventing wheels that will fall off when I put the laptop through a Window that I actually can open.

That was the funny part.

Just got off the phone with a professional colleague—an adversary attorney, in Buffalo. His boss, a fellow exactly my age, he died, Thursday, too…only a call to Dell won’t open his Windows again. Massive heart attack. Three high school kids—cute, too, this was the sort of guy who had the wallet open, wanted to share their pictures, and you didn’t mind, either. Slim guy, athletic and vigorous. A runner. Clean living fellow, I could tell. Sometimes you can just see, a guy who does it right. Gone.

Makes you look around for the shadows. To be sure you’re still casting one.

That was the sad part.

Then, also this weekend, some friends of mine, and some people I feel I know, but have never met, reached out and did something truly heroic and life-preserving. They tried to help someone else, someone I deeply, profoundly care about…tried to get this person, who can be so wondrous and magical, back on the balance beam.

Life hits us all hard, throws us curves, slams doors and crashes Windows of all sorts. Sometimes, every last one of us needs someone to really reach out, give us a hug, say, Hey, I Care. I want to see you back and strong again. Because, you know? You are really fucking special and beautiful and important.

The great folks who did the reaching and hugging are absolute saints. I wish the best for everyone involved, and right about now, I’ll do something I maybe indulge too little, and say a prayer for the well-being of every soul I know.

That was the part that maybe starts a heart beating again. That opens the window and lets the air in.

BOO.

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:13:00 -0400

BOO.:

(via tylercoates)

Fucking INSANE. Doree Shafrir is as talented and resourceful a writer as there is at work in NYC.

Whoever hires her hires a STAR.

So this is how it works in journalism now. Hack away your criminally-underpaid talent in the hopes the titty pics and ads can still sell SOMETHING to SOMEONE.

Wrong.

Absolute Magic. Those pants! Those...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:24:00 -0400

Absolute Magic.

Those pants! Those b—b-b-b—b-ba-ba-ba-ba-bies! That head snap at the end! And if that weren’t more than enough, Cass Elliot eyeing her like a ham sandwich.

The defiantly Mono repro merely adds to its...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:01:16 -0400

The defiantly Mono repro merely adds to its charm.

School’s out, for,ever.